<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>The Bookbinder's Garden by einsKai</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29662494">The Bookbinder's Garden</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/einsKai/pseuds/einsKai'>einsKai</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>A3! (Video Game)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>A3! Big Bang, A3! Big Bang 2021, Alternate Universe – Fantasy, Angst, Death, Domestic, Fluff, Food, Getting to Know Each Other, Literal Sleeping Together, M/M, Tragedy, angst with an ending, no happy ending but also not exactly a bad ending</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 06:14:41</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>21,304</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29662494</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/einsKai/pseuds/einsKai</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>They always arrived in summer.</p><p>They always departed in summer. </p><p>That was how it went – he knew the spiel.</p><p>The Listener, Fate had once told him, was the most mortal of all.</p><p>And… perhaps this one was the best Listener yet.</p><p>“This one is a little special, isn’t he?”</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Minagi Tsuzuru/Mizuno Kaya</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>A3! Big Bang 2021</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Bookbinder's Garden</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>what's up, it's big bang time</p><p>thank you to the wonderful artists <a href="https://twitter.com/indig0blues">indig0blues</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/saawarattene">saawarattene</a> for their work on this. i'm very lucky i got to work together with the two of them and i think the results of their work turned out gorgeous, so please drop a like and retweet and comment, or three, or however many of those you can spare, i know they deserve it.<br/>look at their works: <br/>tsuzuru by indig0blues <a href="https://twitter.com/indig0blues/status/1374215776475901954?s=20">here</a> <br/>mizuno by saawarattene <a href="https://twitter.com/saawarattene/status/1374232007383810051?s=20">here</a>  </p><p>yes i know my previous a3 fics were all comedy and fluff, but this is also me, i promise</p><p>i love thinking about death (not my own, i just realised this sounded like that) and yeah. this story has been in the works for literal years, and now i finally found a fandom to channel it into lmao</p><p>have fun reading! behind the scenes of some sort at the end :D</p><p>follow me or talk to me on <a href="https://twitter.com/eins_kai">twt</a>. or don't. </p><p>-Kai</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There was a knock on the front door of the Mansion.</p><p>Despite the concept of summer not existing in the Mansion Mizuno always felt like he could feel sweltering summer heat whenever he could hear the sound of the massive door knocker sound through the halls.</p><p>This feeling always came in summer.</p><p>Summer, season of heated love and death.</p><p><em>They</em> always arrived in summer.</p><p><em>They </em>always departed in summer.</p><p>That was how it went – he knew the spiel.</p><p>“What happened to him?”, he asked Fate.</p><p>Fate brought the new ones. Her partner, Time, picked up the old ones. Mizuno didn’t know where they went.</p><p>She smiled sadly. Not a sleeper then.</p><p>“You know I can’t tell you that”, she said and composed herself. “Take good care of him, will you?”</p><p>As if he could refuse her. As if he could refuse.</p><p>The small woman turned around. She never entered the Mansion. She couldn’t. It was a place reserved for the dead, the Listener, and Mizuno.</p><p>“Tachibana-san”, Mizuno said. She stopped, her back still turned towards him.</p><p>“What’s his name?”</p><p>He could hear the smile in her voice. Fate’s strength was kind. Possibly that made her even more terrifying than Time’s strict power. “His name is Minagi Tsuzuru.”</p><p>With that she disappeared between the folds of space-time towards her observatory, from where she directed the events of the world.</p><p>Mizuno looked at the young man who she had left with him.</p><p>Listener. Mortal.</p><p>He had experienced this scene many times. It was an eternal circle, ever since death existed.</p><p>It was a routine. Fate, even.</p><p>How ironic.</p><p>Yet… this time around something felt different.</p><p>The young man in front of him seemed… familiar.</p><p>The concept of déjà vu was foreign to Mizuno, but had he known it he would have called this situation a déjà vu.</p><p>The Listener was still unaware of his surroundings, but he would soon awaken. He had to get him inside before that happened, or it would be difficult to convince him to follow him into the Mansion.</p><p>So Mizuno ushered the dazed Listener into the Mansion, towards the bedroom that he had prepared for him.</p><p>There were countless unused rooms in the Mansion that Mizuno took care of regularly, but somehow, he immediately knew that this Listener’s room was this specific one. He always knew things like that because it was his task to know. Yet he still surprised himself with his own abilities on occasion.</p><p>It was a rather small rectangular room with an alcove and a door in the back that led to a bathroom.</p><p>The furniture was similarly simple.</p><p>A narrow bed and a simple desk (cosily nestled into the alcove) with a neat stack of paper on it. Some well-loved books were standing between plain aluminium bookends, accompanied by a simple but bright table lamp. Below a stack of drawers contained stationery. The closet and a chest of drawers were worn and would have looked out of place in any other room; just like the sofa by the only window in the room, that had the same kindness and wrinkles as a caring grandma.</p><p>Adorned by a single plant and more books, the wide windowsill paved the way for the window itself, likely the most interesting part of the room. Not because of the window itself, but because of the view.<br/>
Outside one could see down into a round yard, surrounded by a round building of five stories. Or perhaps there were more stories – the image hadn’t quite manifested itself yet. But Mizuno could still tell what this was: An Elizabethan style theatre, however in a much larger dimension than the theatres from those times. It was completely devoid of people.</p><p>No image from the outside ever had people in them. The Listener couldn’t leave the Mansion, and they shouldn’t be tempted to attempt to do so. Mizuno was the only truly corporeal other any Listener would ever see – and Mizuno wasn’t considered “human”.</p><p>Yet this empty theatre felt unsettling and irreal.</p><p>There should be someone on stage down there. There should be people watching the performance from the seating areas. Laughing. Chatting. Eating.</p><p>This uncanny liminal space out there wasn’t a real place. Anyone who looked at it would know. It was an ideal, and yet something was still missing. A dash of life perhaps.</p><p>But this was the Listener’s image. For him this must have some sort of significance, Mizuno thought with a look at the dishevelled two-toned head of hair on the pillow.</p><p>As if guided by invisible marionette strings the Listener had laid down immediately after entering the room.</p><p>The sound of his even breathing eased Mizuno’s anxieties regarding this new arrival.</p><p>This one would be fine.</p><p>Mizuno covered the Listener with a blanket and killed the light.</p><p> </p><p>🌌🌌🌌</p><p> </p><p>The burning heat of the day of arrival returned the next day, the hot breeze that swept through the Mansion caressing Mizuno’s skin like a gentle flame.</p><p>He stepped into the room where he had left the new Listener last night.</p><p>He was sitting on the edge of his bed, his hair less of a mess than before he had slept. He looked… Good. Refreshed. <em>Ready</em> in a way that Mizuno knew all too well.</p><p>“Good morning”, Mizuno greeted. He was standing in the door, unsure if the Listener would be comfortable with him entering the room completely. “I prepared breakfast for you. If you’d follow me.”</p><p>“Morning!”, the Listener answered energetically. “Breakfast sounds great, uhm…?”</p><p>It took Mizuno a moment to understand that the Listener was asking for his name.</p><p>“Mizuno”, Mizuno said. “But feel free to call me whatever you like.”</p><p>“Mizuno…”, the Listener tested out the feel of Mizuno’s name rolling off his tongue. Mizuno didn’t know what the emotion he felt would be called, but it wasn’t a bad one. “Okay, Mizuno! I’m Tsuzuru. Nice to meet you.”</p><p>“Likewise. Now if you’d follow me to the dining room.”</p><p>He turned and heard the mattress of the bed creak as the Listener got up and began following him.</p><p>When Mizuno was walking through the Mansion it was usually quiet, but somehow this Listener was <em>loud</em> in the best way possible.</p><p>The way he walked, exploring this new environment with healthy curiosity; step after step… It filled the hallways with a pleasant rhythm.</p><p>Life, Mizuno thought, the Listener was so <em>alive</em>.</p><p>This wasn’t the first Listener he had thought this about.</p><p>The Listener, Fate had once told him, was the most mortal of all.</p><p> </p><p>The dining room was extravagant. Large arched windows on one side let the warm orange light of a rising star shine into the room. A prism in each of them scattered rainbow lightdrops across the room, forming an everchanging pattern on the dark wooden floors. It was only interrupted by the elegantly slim pillars dividing the eating area from the windows. With the shadows they cast they added a regulative element to the kaleidoscope of light on the floor.</p><p>The opposite wall was ornated by a large tapestry. It had been created by a Listener so far gone that the current Listener wouldn’t be able to imagine her time.</p><p>She had learned weaving from Listening, for when she had been living with humans, weaving hadn’t been invented yet.</p><p>The tapestry depicted what she had seen, looking out of those very same windows opposite of it: A field, golden with ripe crops, ready for harvest. Above a morning sky as sharp as broken glass.</p><p>“This is my greatest happiness”, she had said when Mizuno helped her hang it on the wall. “Being surrounded by this abundance. I want those after me to feel it too.”</p><p>‘After’ was relative in the Mansion.</p><p>She hadn’t been the first Listener, yet every other one had seen her tapestry. Everything left in the Mansion would be there. Forever, always, at all times. Even in the past.</p><p>Mizuno was the only one who could truly watch the Mansion grow in richness, Listener after Listener. He had never known other, so the inherent paradox of this had never bothered him, though every time he explained it to a Listener they would answer with confusion. He personally enjoyed the phenomenon.</p><p>The table was prepared for one person only. It looked lonely, that giant table easily meant for two dozen people. The table was used to it – only the current Listener ever ate here.</p><p>The Listener looked at the table set for one, then looked back at Mizuno.</p><p>“Aren’t you eating with me?”, he asked.</p><p>A flash of something odd, similar to what he had felt earlier, something warm yet cold, ancient yet new, ran through Mizuno’s body.</p><p>“Sorry”, he said. “I don’t usually eat with the Listener.”</p><p>He didn’t need food to function after all. Neither did the Listener, technically, yet Listeners were usually used to regular meals, and old habits die hard – not even after death.</p><p>“You could still sit with me at least.”</p><p>But Mizuno took position next to the door at the appropriate distance that he had absolutely always kept from all Listeners. The distance he was used to.</p><p>The Listener ate hesitantly, as if he wasn’t used to the kind of food Mizuno had prepared for his breakfast.</p><p>Had he accidentally gotten the cuisine wrong?</p><p>But he never erred, so it was unlikely. Probably something with the Listener.</p><p>When the last bit of food had disappeared from the dishes the Listener got up.</p><p>“Thanks for the food”, he said into the room, and in the light of the rising star outside the window his features looked so kind that Mizuno almost wanted to tell that it was him who had prepared the food, just to have that kindness directed at him, and him alone.</p><p>But he didn’t. It wasn’t his place as the Bookbinder.</p><p>And something told him that the Listener already knew.</p><p> </p><p>🌌🌌🌌</p><p> </p><p>The library sat at the core of the Mansion, like a perfectly cut jewel at the centre of a masterfully crafted pendant.</p><p>It was the only place in the Mansion that Mizuno couldn’t enter on his own. The library needed a Listener.</p><p>The Listener opened the door, and even though the former Listener hadn’t been gone for long, it felt like the door to an ancient secret, untouched for eons, had been opened.</p><p>Time truly worked different in the Mansion.</p><p>“Woah”, the Listener said when he entered.</p><p>Even though he was standing with his back to Mizuno he could see the amazement in him.</p><p>He turned around to take in everything.</p><p>The backwall of the library and the shelves were all cut from the same wood, and when looked at closely it would be revealed that all of the library had been carved from the same impossibly enormous tree.</p><p>Twin flights of stairs led down from the door in elegant symmetry. They embraced the oldest part of the library, the shelf directly carved into the rounded back of the room. The curve was gentle, so one only noticed it when already stepping into the area below the stairs and finding that the books in front were further away than the optical illusion had made it seem after all.</p><p>On the outer sides of the stairs, high bookshelves with long thin ladders finished up the first image of the library. The ladders were more secure than what they seemed like, being spindly and longer than what would have been possible in the average library – reaching upwards into the seemingly infinite shelves. They weren’t technically necessary. If it wanted to be found, there would be no need to go looking for anything, as it would come to the searcher out of its own will.</p><p>A large portion of the wood was ornated by intricate carvings and metalwork. A Listener Mizuno had yet to meet would fill the library with stories, some told bluntly like the dragon hunt on the ceiling between the stairs, or the mysterious patterns on the stairs themselves.</p><p>Another Listener that Mizuno had already met a long time ago had highlighted the carvings with his brazen filigree work. The teeth of the dragon and the arrows of the hunters. A fine web strengthening the carved patterns of the stairs. Details in the shelves. The warm tone of the metal harmonised with the wood. That Listener had been so proud of his work… Mizuno smiled thinking back at the proud face the man had worn every time he had entered the library after finishing.</p><p>He had been in the right. It was beautiful.</p><p>Yet the true charm of the library only surfaced once the books were put into focus.</p><p>All books in the library had been handwritten by Listeners.</p><p>They contained all stories that humanity had wanted to keep. All stories that had been Told by Tellers before they finally faded – all stories that had been Listened to.</p><p>Many Listeners asked for a different method than handwriting at first.<br/>
Mizuno had heard it all, from typewriters to thought-printing, and he had always supplied them with what they desired – except that no story written like that ever made it onto the shelves.</p><p>In the end pen and paper were the only way that any Listener felt was appropriate for the stories they Listened to.</p><p>Something about it was more… personal, and possibly <em>alive</em>.</p><p>Opposite of the gigantic library shelves that reached up to a ceiling so high that not even Mizuno knew how far it truly went, was a window.<br/>
It was made from one piece, as if when Fate and Time had built the Mansion they had commissioned a giant glassblower to construct this half-globe of glass. It was vaulted, reaching out, like the library was inside of a fishbowl. It opened view to the garden of the Mansion that Mizuno tended to.</p><p>With the new Listener’s arrival the sky above had cleared up of the storm clouds the previous Listener had loved watching. Instead, an incredible night sky unlike any one sky naturally visible from anywhere in the physical universe was painted above.</p><p>It took Mizuno a heartbeat to realise what was odd about the view.</p><p>It was a time-lapse of the universe’s tides, of nebulas clashing, birthing stars, forming galaxies, blooming, and withering and starting anew. Endless celestial circles, unknown to any human in their beauty and tragic apathy.</p><p>Unknown to humans. Known to Listener and Bookbinder.</p><p>“Woah”, the Listener repeated himself. There were no other words to say when first entering the library. Mizuno understood. “And you’re sure this is my workplace?”</p><p>“No other place would be more befitting of your work”, Mizuno answered. “You’re the Listener.”</p><p>The smile that the Listener gave him in return for this answer made him feel airy.</p><p>As if something buried deep inside of him, something that he had long forgotten about was slowly regaining life. Starting to grow and raise its delicate, beautiful head above the routine of indifference that he had adopted. Breaking wall after wall, the thick protection he had built around himself carefully, closing him off more and more with every Listener coming and going. Fine cracks were running through his protection, as this something, this pure and beautiful something he couldn’t yet name, began sprouting inside of him.</p><p>A dandelion breaking through concrete.</p><p>“I’ll leave you to it”, Mizuno excused himself quickly. He couldn’t deal with these feelings right now. “I’m sure you’ll find your way around the library. Fate told you about it, right?”</p><p>“Yup. Where are you going though?”</p><p>What did it matter to the Listener where the Bookbinder was going?</p><p>“Nowhere you can go”, he said. “The garden”, he added then, when the Listener kept staring at him questioningly.</p><p>“Alright, have fun”, he said then. “I’m off… to work. I guess. See you at dinner?”</p><p>Mizuno felt himself flush inexplicably. The heat, surely.</p><p> </p><p>🌌🌌🌌</p><p> </p><p>The garden was Mizuno’s safe haven.</p><p>The Listener couldn’t follow outside of the walls of the Mansion – the garden was off-limits.</p><p>So Mizuno came here when he was fed up with his routine when caring for the dead and the dead’s caretaker all became too much.</p><p>Mizuno’s first moment of awareness had been in the garden. Sometimes he wondered if he had just grown on one of the many fruit trees, or began blooming like one of the many flowers, but he could never be too sure about his origins. All he knew that he came from the garden and had been awoken by something shifting in a distant, far-off place.</p><p>Later, Fate had told him that it had been the shift from animal to human: The awareness of mortality, the knowledge that the human would one day die, leave a body behind to become part of the earth. None of them knew what happened after, but that was what Mizuno was there for. It was his calling.</p><p>He strolled along the meticulously cared for flowerbeds, fruit trees and vegetables... His involvement in the work on the garden was minimal if he didn’t want to do more. It could basically care for itself, with the strange powers of the Mansion, like nearly all other tasks of the Mansion could as well. The always growing and shifting garden.</p><p>Mizuno loved it.</p><p>Mizuno walked along a path that had been formed out of marble slabs to fit in with the delicate colours and scents of the flowers around it.</p><p>It was an unusual garden, as neither seasons nor other laws of nature truly applied. Nowhere else in the universe there was any garden like his, Mizuno thought as he looked at daisies blooming next to white autumn crocuses, lilies of the valley, a bush of white roses grazing the border where the orchard began; A cherry tree bearing fruit stood next to a plum tree in full bloom where the flowerbeds faded into the orchard.</p><p>Yes, Mizuno loved his garden. He loved the unique blend of scents that greeted him when he stepped out the door that would stop the Listener, should they attempt to follow him. Every day a different scent – every day a different pattern. The colours of the leaves and flowers were everchanging, not as noticeable as the sky above perhaps. But Mizuno noticed and cared.</p><p>The soil would stay with him. It never changed. The soil was always immaculate, despite there not being a single truly living creature in the garden. Except for him of course. But he wasn’t an earthworm.</p><p>He had learned a lot about gardening from the various Listeners that had envied him for his gardening activities over the eons. He had grown to love the harvesting and the planting, and the soil beneath his feet, even though his work wasn’t strictly necessary. His gardening didn’t have much to do with traditional gardening, that he had to admit. But concepts like tradition meant little in timeless spaces like the Mansion.</p><p>Mizuno was the Bookbinder. If this garden came to existence like the books did, then that was fine with him.</p><p>Mizuno sat down in the grass and leaned against an apple tree as old as death itself. In another place it would have been a miracle that the tree was still standing, not to speak of it bearing fruit. It was one of Mizuno’s oldest companions, having stayed with him since his awakening.</p><p>Maybe the tree wanted to die.</p><p>He couldn’t blame it.</p><p>The existence in the Mansion with the bleak outlook of forever in front of them… He understood that it wasn’t something that was attractive to a tree.</p><p>He just had a hard time letting it go.</p><p>“The new Listener arrived”, he told the tree.</p><p>The tree kept silent, just as it had the last times, they had had this conversation. And as it would be the next time they spoke. <em>He</em> spoke.</p><p>“He’s fresh and eager. Immediately started! But something feels…”, he stared at his hands that he kept loosely folded in his lap as he searched for the right words. “Off? I feel like…”</p><p>A gust of wind tousled his hair. As if the tree was encouraging to take his time and continue at his own pace.</p><p>“I can’t put it into words. Yet? I’m unsure. I can’t stay in the same room with him for too long. He unsettles me. Not in a bad way, but in a way I’ve never felt before. Is that possible? That <em>I</em> haven’t felt a certain way before?”</p><p>Leaves rustling were his answer.</p><p>Mizuno smiled lightly. Truly, it wasn’t something he should be worrying about right now.</p><p>He got up, dusted off his clothes from imaginary dust, and made his way back to the Mansion with newfound courage to face this problem.</p><p> </p><p>🌌🌌🌌</p><p> </p><p>The walk from the kitchen to the library was going to be one that he would make often in the near future. Despite not necessarily needing to, Listeners were generally eager for regular meals.</p><p>“Hunger” was no desire that was brought into the Mansion, and yet…</p><p>“Oh hey”, the Listener greeted him when Mizuno stepped down the stairs and walked towards the desk that the Listener had already made his own. Three neat stacks of paper were placed on his left, distinct scrawl visible to Mizuno.</p><p>Even his handwriting made something twist in Mizuno’s chest. What was going on with him? He shook his head to rid himself of the thought.</p><p>Three was impressive. The fewest Listeners got past two Tellers on the first day. He had had cases where the weight of being responsible for the eternal memory of the formerly-living was too much for Listeners on day one, two, three… some had never managed to Listen to more than a couple dozen in their time. And that was perfectly fine. The number never mattered. It was about the way it was done and satisfying the Tellers, so they could fade.</p><p>Fate always intended what happened with each Listener. She made no mistakes.</p><p>“Hello”, Mizuno greeted. “How is it going?”</p><p>“Well. I think. I mean… I just listen and write down their stories. It’s not that taxing”, the Listener laughed. It sounded hollow.</p><p>Mizuno saw the puffy redness of his eyes and the traces of tears on his cheeks and chose not to comment on it. If the Listener wanted to talk about it, he would choose to sooner or later. This one wasn’t the first Listener that had been affected like this. The average Listener didn’t do three Tellers in one day though. Especially not on the first day. Mizuno made a mental note to keep an eye on this behaviour.</p><p>“Would you like to see what I do with your manuscripts?”, he asked instead of prying further.</p><p>“Oh yeah, sure”, the Listener said. “You’re the Bookbinder, right? I’ve never seen anyone bind books.”</p><p>“It’s probably not like what you think”, Mizuno said and took one of the stacks.</p><p>His bookbinding wasn’t handicraft. It was just like any other task in the Mansion. It worked almost on its own, a book finding itself from different materials, a cover and glue fitting pages of the manuscript together, paint and fabric… Sometimes Mizuno wondered if he actually had any part in it all, or if it was just the Mansion’s mysterious powers needing a catalysator, and that was why he had been created.</p><p>Mizuno finished and put down the completed book of memories on the table.</p><p>The Listener looked at him, his expression unreadable.</p><p>Mizuno felt himself squirm under the look.</p><p>“Would you like some food?”, he asked, quickly evading the other’s eyes to look back at the door. “I prepared dinner.”</p><p>“Sounds good”, from the corner of his eye Mizuno saw the Listener’s shoulders slumping, as if there had been a tension that he hadn’t noticed. He wondered if there had been something the Listener had wanted to say but held back.</p><p>They would get there, Mizuno thought as he led back the way to the kitchen and took his place by the entrance.</p><p>The Listener stood in front of him, for a second before turning around once more.</p><p>“Are you really not eating with me?”</p><p>Mizuno felt that unknown heat get to his face once again.</p><p>“It hardly seems appropriate”, he said quickly. “Please don’t mind me. I’m alright. You eat. You had a long day, didn’t you?”</p><p>He said more than he had intended to say, but the expression on the face of the Listener softened, and Mizuno felt his heart throb when he looked into those green eyes that witnessed three lives today.</p><p>Perhaps this one was the best Listener yet.</p><p> </p><p>🌌🌌🌌</p><p> </p><p>And such began the time of this Listener.</p><p>The heat faded into a lingering warmth that laid on top of the Mansion like a comforting blanket.</p><p>Despite Mizuno’s initial uncertainty concerning him, he got along with the Listener better now. The only thing that had been missing had apparently been understanding how this Listener worked.</p><p>The answer was simply put: A lot.</p><p>The Listener could almost always be found in the library. Listening or writing, or both. Sometimes he closed the door, and Mizuno had to knock multiple times until it was opened again. The only downside to having a door that only opened for the Listener.</p><p>But apart from being incredibly productive, the Listener was also exceptionally good at his job.</p><p>Mizuno understood that he had some experience writing from when he had been alive. Though that wasn’t a guarantee for a good Listener – Mizuno had known writers who became Listeners, and they had taken just as long to adjust to the Listener occupation as others.</p><p>Somehow the Listener knew exactly how to please the Tellers, how to look at them, how to put their words, their stories to paper.</p><p>It was a delight to watch him work… Even though Mizuno should spend his time otherwise. The Mansion did need its Bookbinder to take care of it.</p><p>Still, he couldn’t help but steal gazes at the Listener every other time he came across the library.</p><p>Like he was magnetic, Mizuno’s eyes felt drawn to the Listener. His attentive expression, eyes fixed on the Teller in front of him, teeth worrying his lower lip when he wrote what he was Told.</p><p>Mizuno loved watching him.</p><p> </p><p>🌌🌌🌌</p><p> </p><p>It had started as a convenient way to communicate without having to find each other in the vast halls of the Mansion. Not that the Listener could really be found anywhere outside of his study in the library – there didn’t seem to be anything on his mind other than the work conducted in there. Sometimes Mizuno worried about him overworking himself, but that was hardly possible for a Listener after all.</p><p>One day when Mizuno had planned to spend the entirety of the day in the garden, he had prepared all meals for the day ahead and quietly entered the Listener’s room to leave a letter on his desk. The small envelope sat in the centre of the desk, reading “to the Listener” in the language that he had been used to in his lifetime, waiting to be found by the Listener as soon as he woke up.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Dear Listener,<br/>
I pray you have had a pleasant rest.<br/>
I have prepared all meals for today ahead of time. You will find them in the kitchen. I trust that the Mansion will keep them warm for you, yet if it by some error should not, I have ensured that these are meals that are just as delicious when enjoyed cold.<br/>
Sincerely,<br/>
            Mizuno Kaya.</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>When he had come back from a long, long day of tending to the garden by mostly just staying there, keeping it company, he had found a letter on the dining table, at the seat where the Listener usually ate.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Thanks for the food Mizuno.<br/>
It was delicious as always (and the warmth thing worked too! Just like you said. Even though I really could’ve warmed up some food myself...)<br/>
Today a Teller was really into cars and talked about a flying model that she invented and engineered. I had no idea that the world would become like that in the future!<br/>
Wish I had seen you today. At least stay for breakfast next time?<br/>
             -Tsuzuru</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Mizuno almost dropped the basket of produce he was holding when he read that letter.</p><p>“’Wish I had seen you today’…?”, he mumbled.</p><p>He… He’d have to find a place to put this letter. Should he frame it? No, that would probably be too much…</p><p>Suddenly he remembered an empty cardboard box in a storage room that was otherwise empty. It was likely only in the mansion to contain this letter that the Listener had given to him. To him! A letter from the Listener, just for him.</p><p>Strange workings of the Mansion… A whole room for just this one letter.</p><p> </p><p>But it didn’t stop at one letter.</p><p>It became a sort of habit, even on days where they saw each other. More often than not Mizuno would find notes thanking him for meals or his work at the dinner table, or at his workplace in the library, and even stuck to the handle of the door to the garden.</p><p>He stored all of them away in that cardboard box meant only for them. Neat and orderly, each letter with its own designated place, so that, if he wanted to, he could pick out the one he had thought of and read it again.</p><p>In turn he also wrote letters. They turned out much shorter than the first one he wrote, and shockingly, much less formal as well.</p><p>Simple questions like if the Listener had any cravings regarding dinner, reminders to take breaks and “do your bests” sneaked onto the paper that he left on desks and snack trays and hidden under cups of coffee or tea he brought into the library.</p><p>Mizuno enjoyed their little correspondence.</p><p>He had felt out of place, like he was overstepping boundaries of some sort, when the Listener attempted direct conversation, but this he could handle.</p><p>He looked at the note sitting on the tray he was carrying at the moment and entered the library.</p><p>It was oddly silent inside. No scratching of pen on paper, no mumbling of a Teller, no affirmative hums, and words…</p><p>Mizuno stepped closer and saw that the Listener had fallen asleep on the table, apparently after the latest Teller had faded.</p><p>The chair he was sitting in had luckily prevented him from falling.</p><p>Something compelled Mizuno to put down the tray with the fresh cup of tea and the note informing the Listener about what was for dinner on the desk. He approached him hands-free. He wasn’t sure what he meant to do, but when he stood that close to the other, he got a perfect view of the Listener’s face.</p><p>The light of the sky outside reflected on the Listener’s features.</p><p>Painted by the galaxies, Mizuno thought. While he was admiring the work of art that the Listener had been turned into by the touch of sleep and the light.</p><p>His eyelashes were long, Mizuno observed. They cast a shadow of soft valleys and hills on the Listener’s illuminated cheeks, and Mizuno’s eyes followed along those hiking trails of light and shadow. His breath got stuck in his throat.</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  
</p><p>He didn’t notice that the Listener was blinking up at him from below.</p><p>“Mizuno?”, his voice was rough from lack of use and perhaps dehydration during his impromptu nap.</p><p>Mizuno jerked back, face heating up. He quickly retreated, bringing an appropriate distance between them, between Listener and Bookbinder.</p><p>“S-Sorry”, he struggled to keep his composure. “I was just wondering if you maybe wanted some tea?”</p><p>The Listener’s face split into a smile so blinding that Mizuno thoughts his heart would get sunburnt.</p><p>“Sure. Sit with me?”</p><p>Mizuno did not sit with him. Instead he wondered if he hadn’t figured out the Listener after all.</p><p> </p><p>🌌🌌🌌</p><p> </p><p>Mizuno quickened his pace. He had lost track of time (how ironic) while staying in the garden. There, at the heart, the place closest to his origin, he had stayed comfortably for a time longer than he had planned.</p><p>The felt time for the Listener must have gone past his lunch time and should be close to dinner.</p><p>Mizuno hoped that the Listener wouldn’t get cranky over the missed meal… Just the thought of the Listener looking at him disdainfully, or worse, disappointedly was…<br/>
No. He shook his head to get rid of the mental image. He shouldn’t beat himself up about it before it even happened. If he just stayed positive the terrible outcome wouldn’t be too bad. Maybe.</p><p>Perhaps he had wandered off into too many impossible scenarios when he had allowed his mind to drift earlier. The hours in the garden were the closest Mizuno got to “sleep”, and those fantasies that came to his inner eye involuntarily and painted the most scandalous and impossible images… They were unmistakably his version of “dreams”.</p><p>And if in those dreams Mizuno had seen himself close the distance that he kept between himself and the Listener to stand by him and not behind him, he sure would do absolutely anything to keep himself from acting out these delusions. There was no way the Listener would appreciate closeness with someone like him.</p><p>He might look human but in reality, he was nothing but an alien being, created from the world itself. His existence was founded in a collective understanding of something even stranger than him – the ultimate and final strangeness that could be known. The inevitable <em>other</em>. Death.</p><p>There was nothing to gain for the Listener. Not through closeness with Mizuno.</p><p>A shiver ran down his spine as he opened the door to the Mansion.</p><p>The lack of light in the library worried him. Had the Listener already gone to bed?</p><p>But the truth hit him along with a wonderful scent when he scurried along the corridor to get to the Listener’s bedroom to apologise. He had to pass the dining room to get to said bedroom.</p><p>He stopped.</p><p>Someone was cooking.</p><p>
  <em>The Listener was cooking.</em>
</p><p>Mizuno opened the door to the dining hall and quickly entered the kitchen.</p><p>There he was standing in the kitchen, humming to himself and stirring what looked like a pot of stew.</p><p>What.</p><p>
  <em>What?</em>
</p><p>“D-did you make this?”, Mizuno asked, even though he <em>knew</em> that there was no other soul in the Mansion, and there were clearly stains from the purple potatoes he had brought from the garden on the Listener’s hands. And he was <em>standing there and stirring</em>, and it smelled really good.</p><p>The Listener startled at his voice, but then smiled at him.</p><p>“Oh, hey Mizuno. I was wondering when you’d get back. I made stew for dinner.”</p><p>“You… yes, you did. You did that.”</p><p>The Listener turned back to his stew. “I knew someone who cooked a lot and well when I was”, he seemed to search for the right term. “Alive”, would mean admitting to himself that he was dead. Mizuno had rarely seen any Listener accept their own passing easily. “When I was where the Tellers come from. That person taught me a thing or two.”</p><p>Mizuno still didn’t know what to say.</p><p>The Listener had casually taken over a task that he wouldn’t have had to do. He could’ve not eaten, there was no need to eat in this timeless place. He could have waited for Mizuno to return to provide him with a meal, as was the order of the Mansion. But no. The Listener had used his own two hands and cooked for himself. For… himself?”</p><p>“Come and sit with me”, the Listener said, two bowls of steaming stew in his hands. “I set the table for two today, and I cooked, so you can’t refuse.”</p><p>If Mizuno was being honest, every fibre of his body told him to run, to get away from that place. There was a heat on his face, and his hands shook, and he didn’t understand these reactions, they were unlike anything he had ever experienced and he struggled to equate it to any human behaviour that he might have heard about.</p><p>But something compelled him to stay.</p><p>So he stayed and sat down, right next to the Listener where he had put an additional spoon.</p><p>Sitting at the dining table it felt even larger than usual. Ridiculously large. The Listener might be the esteemed head of the Mansion, but they were not monarchy. They didn’t host decadent banquets. There was no need for a dining table this large. It would only amplify the loneliness of being the only one eating.</p><p>The Listener put down the bowl of stew in front of him and took his seat.</p><p>For a moment, his body blocked out the light from the rising star outside, and instead of being bathed in that fiery golden breath, Mizuno sat in absolute darkness. It felt like multiple lifetimes passed during the transit.</p><p>The feeling of inferiority at this Listener’s presence, large enough to shield Mizuno from a star, larger than <em>life</em>, and yet the most fragile, the most mortal creature around… It drowned out the world and words the Listener said to him next.</p><p>Only when he felt a gaze pierce him, Mizuno woke up from his freeze and looked back questioningly.</p><p>“Aren’t you eating?”, the Listener asked.</p><p>“Ah, I’m terribly sorry”, Mizuno lifted his spoon and took a mouthful.</p><p>A gentle and rich flavour flooded his mind as the stew filled his mouth. The vegetables were so soft, they practically melted away under his tongue before he could even attempt chewing.</p><p>He swallowed, and the heat (Perfect, not too hot, and not yet losing its comforting warmth) wandered down from his mouth and into his stomach. There it sat, glowing, and warming him, like a tiny version of the star outside of the window.</p><p>The Listener eyed him watchfully while he ate.</p><p>“Do you like it?”, he asked after a while.</p><p>Mizuno had still not gotten over his first spoon.</p><p>“It’s so good!”, he said, but quickly covered his mouth. He had gotten louder than he intended to. “Pardon. I meant”, he cleared his throat to hide his embarrassment. “Thank you for the food. It was delicious.”</p><p>“You can’t stop eating after just one spoon though?”, the Listener said with a smile. There was disbelief in his tone. “Come on, at least finish the bowl.”</p><p>Mizuno took another spoonful and the experience repeated itself. Was eating always this good?</p><p>A third time and he closed his eyes in bliss.</p><p>He felt like he could cry. But while the stew was wonderful and melted in his mouth, his composure was luckily still intact. At least partly.</p><p>“<em>Now</em> you look like you’re enjoying yourself”, the Listener said.</p><p>When Mizuno didn’t answer, he continued: “Eating is supposed to be fun! That fun is made from a bunch of different components, like who made the food, and how the food looks, and how it feels, and how it smells and tastes. But I think it’s also about who you eat with, you know?”</p><p>Ah. Mizuno could listen to the Listener go on forever.</p><p>The thought snapped him out of the blissful trance he had been lulled into. That was right. Forever was him, and him alone. The Listener would be gone soon anyway. There was no point in making friends. He’d leave just like the others had, and a new Listener would come, and this cycle would continue until humanity managed to conquer death itself.<br/>
There was no point.</p><p>“You’ve been eating alone all this time, right? Even though you could’ve eaten with me. I had a large family and lots of friends, so I’m used to eating with people. So… I guess what I’m trying to say is, please eat with me from now on, Mizuno. Like I said, I’m used to it, and I <em>like</em> eating with people. And also, I’ve never been of high status or anything, so having you hide away when you’re eating like you’re my servant or something just doesn’t sit right with me. It’s not bad, I’m not mad at you or anything, but it’s just kinda weird to me—”</p><p>“Actually”, Mizuno’s mouth supplied. It was a few strides ahead of his brain, and Mizuno already felt regret at what he was going to say now. “I don’t eat at all.”</p><p>The Listener stared at him, mouth slightly open. Bewildered.</p><p>“<em>What</em>? No, wait no, hold on. That can’t be right. This isn’t true, it’s not like that, right? You’re kidding me Mizuno. Right?”</p><p>Mizuno didn’t understand what was so absurd about it.</p><p>“I don’t require nourishment”, he said. “Neither do you. The Mansion—”</p><p>“So you just <em>don’t</em>? At all?”, the Listener interrupted him. “That’s so sad. Mizuno, food, and eating are <em>fun</em>. Of course I know I don’t have to eat anymore, but I <em>like</em> it.”</p><p>Mizuno was flabbergasted. He had never thought about eating himself. Because he hadn’t thought about it as a leisure activity.</p><p>“We can’t have that”, the Listener said decidedly. “From now on you’re eating with me every day. I’ll teach you how much fun eating can be.”</p><p>“Every day…”, Mizuno looked down into his half-eaten bowl. The Mansion didn’t let it cool down to keep it at its most pleasant temperature, so despite their conversation it was still steaming. He would get to feel like he did when tasting the stew every day…? Was that a kind of luxury that he was allowed to have?</p><p>“Yeah. If necessary, I’ll cook for you every day. You’ll have to eat my cooking.”</p><p>“That won’t be necessary”, Mizuno said quickly. He felt his face grow warmer. “I just… Every day is… quite a lot, all of the sudden.”</p><p>Something seemed to hit the Listener, and the tips of his ears flushed a lovely colour, emphasised by the light from outside of the windows.</p><p>“Wait”, he said, seemingly talking to himself. “Was this the first time you have ever eaten…?”</p><p>Mizuno gave the slightest nod, and the Listener groaned and buried his head in his hands.</p><p>“Oh my god”, he mumbled. “If I had known I would’ve made something more elaborate than <em>stew</em>. Now the first thing you’ve ever eaten is stew brand Tsuzuru…”</p><p>“I quite like it”, Mizuno said. “I’m glad that it was your stew that I got to eat.”</p><p>He didn’t know where he got the confidence to say these kinds of things from either. Apparently, the retribution was the same energy that had pushed him to say it being transformed into body heat in real-time. Because now not only his face, but his entire body felt like it was blushing.</p><p>“…Thanks”, the Listener said. He perked up. “Oh, right. I hope I didn’t accidentally break any Mansion rules by using the kitchen? I mean, even if I did, an exception can be made, right? Once doesn’t count and all.”</p><p>Mizuno felt an involuntary chuckle shake his shoulders. “No, I believe there’s no rule like that”, he said. “Though try focusing on your Listening more than the cooking. That’s what you have me for after all.</p><p>The Listener’s expression softened. “Yes”, he said. Mizuno’s heart fluttered. “That’s what I have you for.”</p><p>Again, something made Mizuno shiver. The initial heat of the Listener’s arrival had begun to dissipate.<br/>
And yet… somehow, he felt warmer than when he arrived. Must’ve been the food warming him up from the inside.</p><p> </p><p>🌌🌌🌌</p><p> </p><p> “What’s this?”, the Listener asked one evening.</p><p>The dining room had changed, and the Listener had noticed. It wasn’t a big change though – something like that would be unsettling and a bad sign. No, it was a tiny change brought into the room by Mizuno himself.</p><p>“Daffodils”, Mizuno said from the kitchen. He set the last two bowls down on the table and began filling the Listener’s with rice. “I brought them from the garden. They reminded me of y—”</p><p>He stopped himself and busied his hands with filling his own dish with rice.</p><p>The Listener didn’t answer. Instead he looked at the small vase with the couple of flowers intensely.</p><p>“Is everything alright…?”, Mizuno asked carefully. “If it bothers you, I can take them outside again.”</p><p>“It doesn’t bother me at all”, the Listener finally gave a reaction. “I love them, actually.”</p><p>Mizuno felt like a weight had been lifted off his chest. He had thought that flowers were a universal bringer of joy, but that first reaction had put him off. He never wanted any Listener to feel anything but comfortable, but this was the first time he brought flowers from the garden as table decorations.</p><p>“I saw them and thought that they would work well for you”, he said. “It was an urge to bring them inside to show you, perhaps?”</p><p>“Thanks Mizuno”, the Listener said. He traced a finger along one of the petals gently. The silky material of the blossom sank in slightly under the delicate touch.</p><p>Mizuno caught himself envying the flower inexplicably. He quickly shook his head to get rid of the feeling.</p><p>“I can bring more flowers from now on”, Mizuno said. The gentle warmth of his meal was spreading from his stomach to his head and was loosening his tongue. He realised what he had said and quickly added an: “If you’d like.”</p><p>“These flowers”, the Listener said instead of answering. “Are they exactly like the ones I knew?”</p><p>“I have no reference”, Mizuno answered. “But like everything in the Mansion the flowers have an earthly image they’re made after. So I assume they’re similar enough to what you know as “daffodils”. If someone on earth dissected these it’s unlikely that they would find anything out of the ordinary or otherwise remarkable.”</p><p>“I see”, the Listener said. He seemed to think about something.</p><p>“It’s interesting”, he said then. “This Mansion exists beyond life and time for the dead to come here, and still something as symbolic as these flowers exists. “New Life”, in the form of an early flowering plant. It’s kinda ironic and at the same time… I can’t take my eyes off it.”</p><p>Mizuno looked at the Listener’s profile, followed his line of sight to the daffodils in the vase and back to his eyes.</p><p>“Have you written poetry before?”, he asked then.</p><p>“What, me?”, the Listener turned towards him and let out a tiny unbelieving laugh. “Poetry? Oh, <em>please</em>.”</p><p>“Forgive me, I just thought that what you just said sounded rather poetic.”</p><p>“I didn’t write poetry. Just plays.”</p><p>“Plays”, Mizuno repeated. “That sounds interesting as well.”</p><p>“I have some of mine in my room”, the Listener said. “I like rereading them from time to time. They awaken a lot of memories, since each is different and was acted out by different people and stuff…”, he stopped for a moment and sought Mizuno’s eyes. Mizuno nodded approvingly, to encourage him to go on.</p><p>“Alright, so the plays I wrote were like… Really story- and character-focused. I also wrote a couple of screenplays with a friend later, and it didn’t turn out much different, fourth wall intact and all. Really Diderot in that aspect, though we usually didn’t go for the Cold Actor. But obviously what <em>I</em> wrote isn’t the only thing on the market. I got to see a lot, I went to other troupes for inspo and for learning and I also went to college to study theatre, so I know a thing or two.”</p><p>He seemed to speak slower than his mind was running. He had already thought of the next point that he was going to say and was excited to get there.</p><p>“Maybe you’re not all that wrong with the poetry thing! I know a couple of plays that are more poetry than prose, and it’s important for the flow that they’re presented with a certain metre in the language. I wouldn’t stop at Shakespeare there, but go up to Epic and Modern theatre. There was this one prof who made us students chant one of Brecht’s learning plays in the lecture hall, and once you’ve done that you suddenly know why it was written like <em>that</em>. Even if the translation might not be completely accurate, it was still intoxicating. Like Noh actually! Now that I think about it there’s a lot more poetry-like things in theatre. You might’ve been onto something there Mizuno!”</p><p>The Listener took a breath from his rambling.</p><p>Mizuno hadn’t even noticed that he had begun to smile halfway through all that information flowing towards him from the Listener.</p><p>He had looked <em>radiant</em>. His eyes had begun to shine with an amazing passion as soon as he had started speaking, and he had become more and more animated. Sharing this had meant something to the Listener. Sadly, Mizuno had no experience with these things, otherwise he would have loved to engage in a discussion with him. He was sure that if he knew how to ask the right questions, he’d get to see even more of this side of the Listener.</p><p>“So yeah. Visual metaphors and stuff like that isn’t rare in theatre either. And I guess that’s like poetry too, so… Maybe I’ve kinda written poetry too. But I’m definitely not a poet, or… artist or whatever! That’s not my world. I’m just a guy with a laptop who writes stories.”</p><p>“Alright”, Mizuno said. “I’d love to hear more about your plays. Would you show me sometime?”</p><p>The Listener returned his smile. “Sure! Whenever you’re free.”</p><p>“I look forward to it.”</p><p> </p><p>The daffodils disappeared from the dining table after a couple of meals.</p><p>Before Mizuno could wonder where they had gone, he found them.</p><p>Hung from the wall, carefully dried and turned so the delicate petals wouldn’t be crushed against the wall, they were displayed above the Listener’s bed.</p><p>Only fitting, Mizuno thought. A symbol of life staying with the Listener, the anchor for all that had once been alive.</p><p> </p><p>🌌🌌🌌</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>If you would like a specific vegetable or fruit from the garden, please tell me today. I’ll be going tonight.<br/>
            Mizuno Kaya</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>How about tangerines? :D<br/>
            -Tsuzuru</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>Good choice. I will bring some.<br/>
            Mizuno Kaya</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>What kinda things do you like, Mizuno?</em>
</p><p> </p><p>He had been surprised to find a letter with this kind of content stuck to the door leading to the garden. A common place for the Listener to leave these letters, or rather notes by now, but the content…? That was unusual.</p><p>What kind of things did Mizuno like?</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>The garden. Eating with you. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>He scribbled. Then added</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>What about you?</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>He put the note back to where he had found it. Surely the Listener would check for it in a while and find his answer.</p><p>This was the first time he didn’t sign the note. It felt almost scandalous leaving it like this, and Mizuno felt his heartbeat high in his throat. He slapped his own cheeks. There was no need to get this excited about something this silly.</p><p>When he came back from the garden, leaving the mild night behind, he found another piece of paper stuck to the first one to make more room for the message.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>I like eating with you too! Other than that I’d say my family, friends, and theatre. Soccer too probably. That’s a sport in case you didn’t know.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Mizuno took the note from the door and pocketed it.<br/>
It would be perfect for his little collection in that cardboard box. It was slowly but surely filling up. He’d need a second one soon, and he had already found one, hidden in a corner of that very same storage room.</p><p>He dropped by the Listener’s room, where he heard no noise. He was probably sleeping already – they had had breakfast together, so it was fine, he could keep his promise of eating with him every day.</p><p>Tip-toeing into the dark room as to not wake the sleeping man on the bed, Mizuno placed the simple white flower on the Listener’s desk. The gerbera had stood out to Mizuno from next to the path when he had made his way back to the Mansion. He had picked one, the sweet scent almost overwhelming his senses.</p><p>Yes, this would be nice to give to the Listener, he had thought, and so he had brought it back.</p><p>The even breathing of the Listener in the dark room was a metronome of calm. Mizuno didn’t sleep like the Listeners did, but he was glad that this Listener got some actual rest.</p><p>He wondered if there were any dreams visiting the Listener this night.</p><p> </p><p>🌌🌌🌌</p><p> </p><p>It started with another note.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Don’t worry about me today. I’ll eat and stuff on my own.<br/>
            -Tsuzuru</em>
</p><p> </p><p>The Listener wanted to be left alone.</p><p>That wasn’t unusual.</p><p>It had happened with a lot of Listeners before.</p><p>Mizuno would have to follow what the Listener said and just wait it out... He would get better soon. Hopefully.</p><p> </p><p>He did not get better.</p><p>The Listener didn’t leave the library anymore.<br/>
The Listener didn’t come to their meals anymore.<br/>
The Listener didn’t sleep anymore.</p><p>Mizuno of course also stopped the regular meals. There was no point to it without the Listener after all.</p><p>At least the Listener left the door to the library open most of the time, so Mizuno could come see him and bring him coffee.</p><p>He really did nothing but Listen anymore. Listen the entire time. Ink-stained hands and deep bags under his eyes, the Listener didn’t seem to be able to stop.</p><p>“Won’t you take a break?”, Mizuno suggested at some point. He was binding a suspiciously slim book. It could barely be called a book; it was more of a booklet.</p><p>Young humans also died. They also had memories and precious moments, and if they were just the strange and synaesthetic experience of the first few days of life. Those days when touch and smell and hearing and seeing and tasting was all one singular <em>experience</em>, inseparable, mysteriously able to sense everything and nothing at the same time.</p><p>Mizuno had read such accounts before and he had already spoke to various Listeners about it. It was all he could do to lift the burden of Listening to someone who had found an untimely end.</p><p>Was it this? Was this the factor that had brought the Listener down? This experience that made him bury himself in work, so he could forget about the pain that very same work had brought him?<br/>
Listening was the most stimulating thing to do in the Mansion, and yet… he felt like something else was missing.</p><p>“Maybe later. I’ll be fine.”</p><p>He stole a look at the Listener.</p><p>He looked terrible. There was no way he would get through this without collapsing.</p><p>Mizuno flipped open the booklet.</p><p>The account inside was about as terrifying as Mizuno had assumed.</p><p>Retelling every detail from kidnapping to murder told from the perspective of a person as young as this one had been… It wasn’t pretty.</p><p>But it was also a way to die, so they had to be Listened to.</p><p>The Listener couldn’t just decide that they didn’t want to Listen to people with terrible stories. It was part of the job.</p><p>Mizuno had met Listeners who would stop Listening after such a case.</p><p>This one seemed to do the opposite. Work to take his mind off work, but neither approach was healthy or productive for anyone involved.</p><p>He had to get the Listener to talk about this. To resolve this. But how…?</p><p> </p><p>Mizuno went into the garden.</p><p>Speaking with the tree would lead him to the right approach, he believed.</p><p>“The Listener is tormented”, he started, and the wind’s gentle waft in the branches of the tree was his answer. It brought a certain freshness with it that Mizuno didn’t know the origin of. The nicely cool breeze mingled with the gentle warmth of the air. It felt nice, comforting. He could do this. He could get through this.</p><p>“He has Listened to the terrible fate of a child and has plunged himself into work. He isn’t taking breaks and he isn’t sleeping. I fear he will collapse and fade before his time.”</p><p>Mizuno took a deep breath. The odour in the air was the familiar mix of blooming trees and ripe fruit. He reckoned that if any human ever entered this garden they would be utterly confused by the onslaught of conflicting sensations.</p><p>“I… don’t want him to work himself towards his end”, he admitted, and he wasn’t sure if it was to himself, or to the tree. “I would like him to enjoy his time as the Listener to the fullest. I want him to accept the task with all its ups and downs.”</p><p>Quieter, and surprising even to himself, he added: “And I want to face the challenges by his side.”</p><p>He shoved the inappropriate thoughts to the side.</p><p>“In the end”, he mused. “Isn’t this life after his not-quite death a punishment for the Listener? Who am I to the Listeners? Their punisher?”</p><p>An apple dropped into his lap from the branches above him.</p><p>That was right. The Listener was no Tantalus, and neither was Mizuno a Fury. He would get over his uncertainties concerning the Listener. He had to. Because he was the Bookbinder.</p><p>“Do you think the Listener would like an apple pie?”</p><p> </p><p>In the end he didn’t know if the Listener left the library in pursuit of more coffee to force himself to stay awake for much longer, or if it was the delicious smell of freshly bakes apple pie that lured him out, but no matter which one it was, the result was the same.</p><p>“You made pie?”, the Listener asked, standing in the door that connected kitchen and dining hall.</p><p>“Indeed”, Mizuno said, taking off his oven gloves. “Shall we have a slice and a talk?”</p><p>“I have work—”</p><p>“I believe this is more important right now”, Mizuno pressed further. “Don’t you think?”</p><p>He saw a spark of self-destructive defiance light up in the Listener’s eyes, only for it to immediately get extinguished by something larger, something that Mizuno didn’t quite understand.</p><p>“Yeah, okay”, the Listener said. “Let’s have pie.”</p><p>The pie was fresh out of the oven and pleasantly warm, even though it would cool down to room temperature later. Mizuno understood it had to do something with earth traditions of eating pie, but he had found that many Listeners enjoyed theirs warm instead of at room temperature.</p><p>They ate quietly, the Listener seemingly still stuck in his own head. He ate in big bites. After all he hadn’t been eating much lately.<br/>
He still stopped for a moment, closing his eyes, and appreciating the taste.</p><p>Mizuno chewed slowly. How could he best approach this?</p><p>Mizuno decided to be frank. “Please know that you’re not the only Listener bothered by the accounts of children”, he said. “It’s terribly sad to be witness to such a short life. But that makes it even more important to Listen to them.”</p><p>The Listener had woken from his own thoughts and was looking at Mizuno directly now. His eyes, cleared of the veil of tiredness for the moment, were looking directly at him. He smiled a smile that didn’t reach them.</p><p>“Mizuno, thank you for worrying about me, seriously”, he said then. “But you got it wrong. Partly at least.”</p><p>“Please tell me then”, Mizuno said. “As the Bookbinder it’s in my interest that the Listener is comfortable and can work properly.”</p><p>“As the Bookbinder, huh…”, the Listener mumbled.</p><p>Mizuno waited for him to continue.</p><p>“Alright”, the Listener said then. “The problem wasn’t the child. I mean, it was part of it, sure, but the last drop was that guy… He…”</p><p>The Listener struggled with words.</p><p>“If you can’t say it, can you show me?”</p><p>The Listener nodded. “Follow me”, he said.</p><p>Mizuno knew the way to library better than anyone but being led by the Listener like this felt different. It was as if he was accompanying a lamb to the slaughter. His shoulders were hanging in exhaustion and resignation, and Mizuno was wondering what could have been this devastating to the Listener, if it hadn’t been the account of the deceased child.</p><p>From a drawer the Listener produced a manuscript. He had kept it hidden there, obviously so Mizuno wouldn’t turn it into a book.</p><p>Without a word Mizuno took the manuscript and flipped through it.</p><p>The life of a criminal. A sadistic person who did everything they could to hurt others. They were relentlessly brutal towards weaker people, and they got away with it all. In the end they died a peaceful death, never having been apprehended for their abuse and murders.</p><p>Mizuno looked up from the manuscript and found the Listener looking back at him. The dark circles under his eyes felt like they weighed heavier now.</p><p>He adjusted his grip on the manuscript. He had tightened it unconsciously.</p><p>“I understand”, he said then.</p><p>“I get that there’s no discrimination here”, the Listener said. “In death everyone becomes just that. Dead. But I still feel bad about this.”</p><p>Mizuno nodded slowly. “Yes. And it’s reasonable to feel that way.”</p><p>The Listener stayed quiet. Mizuno began binding the book. It was done quickly, a simple black cover and cleanly cut pages. Nothing special, nor extravagant. Nothing that would let anyone suspect the contents.</p><p>“Perhaps next time you ought to voice concerns instead of locking yourself in the library and working yourself to exhaustion”, Mizuno suggested. “Talking about it could help, don’t you think?”</p><p>“Uh-huh”, the Listener yawned. “I’ll tell you next time.”</p><p>Mizuno nodded curtly and handed the Listener the finished book.</p><p>“Please handle manuscripts like this one very carefully from now on”, he said. “For your own safety.”</p><p>The Listener took back the book. Their fingers brushed for a moment, and Mizuno felt an electric spark pass between them, along with the book. The sensation was pleasant.</p><p>“Thanks Mizuno”, the Listener said. “I appreciate it. For real.”</p><p>“And now you need rest. No work until you’ve taken a real break.”</p><p>The Listener smiled as if he was smiling about a private joke. Mizuno felt privileged and strangely… voyeuristic, witnessing an expression like that.</p><p>“Alright, I’ll go to bed”, the Listener said, and with that disappeared from the Library, leaving Mizuno behind.</p><p> </p><p>🌌🌌🌌</p><p> </p><p>“What’s the garden like?”, the Listener asked at lunch one day. They were having sandwiches, in the way a Listener had once described to Mizuno, to suit their tastes best. The current Listener had called them ‘unusual but tasty’ which Mizuno counted as a success.</p><p>On the table there was low glass bowl, half-filled with some water and a carnation flower floating between its own loose petals. Mizuno had brought it back from the garden earlier, and the arrangement had been the idea of the Listener. It highlighted the flower’s fragile mortality. In the light of the rising star, warmer than the average temperature of the Mansion these days, the water shone bright red.</p><p>“The garden? It is vast and full of variety. There are a lot of plants like trees, and flowers, and crops as well. It is where I am from and I love it dearly.”</p><p>“So you came from the garden?”</p><p>“My first memory is of me waking in the orchard”, Mizuno said. “I didn’t have a growing period like you, I was immediately self-aware and knew about my purpose. Instinct, you could call it?”</p><p>“Hmm…”, the Listener took a bite. He chewed and Mizuno could hear the gears in his head turning. “So I, the one who watches over the dead, can’t go to the birthplace of the one who watches over me?”</p><p>“Eh?”</p><p>“I mean, I can’t go outside, that’s normal because we’re like. In space or something. Don’t try to explain it because I doubt I’d understand. This isn’t something that was made to be understood by humans, so I’m accepting it and that’s that. But I don’t get why I can’t go into the garden. It has a wall, right? Isn’t that technically the Mansion’s walls as well?”</p><p>Mizuno thought about it for a while.</p><p>“Perhaps”, he said then. “It is to give me a private space?”</p><p>“What about me then?”</p><p>“The library door can only be opened by you”, Mizuno said. “The library may be the Listener’s, while the garden may be the Bookbinders.”</p><p>“Kinda cool, don’t you think?”</p><p>“I wonder if that’s the right answer”, Mizuno said. “I should ask next time—”</p><p>He stopped himself. The next visitor he would see would be Time. And that would mean that he wouldn’t be able to answer the Listener anymore.</p><p>“Yeah, let’s ask”, the Listener said, oblivious to what was going through Mizuno’s head.</p><p>His smile chased the dark thoughts away. The now was more important.</p><p>A carnation petal sank from the surface of the water to the bottom of the bowl, dyed in light as red as blood.</p><p> </p><p>🌌🌌🌌</p><p> </p><p>Mizuno was sitting in the library. There was no reason for him to be there right now. He had finished the last manuscript a while ago, and the next one seemed to take a while. The Listener was currently Listening to a Teller, who had had a long and satisfying life. Also they seemed to believe that many things were important enough to put them down into their book. Of course that was what many Tellers felt, and of course they were indulged in the Mansion.</p><p>Mizuno was stealing looks at the Listener.</p><p>His teeth were biting his lower lip unconsciously, a sign of his concentration. He had been writing all day, and Mizuno could see ink stain the fingers of his writing hand. Later he would have to clean that hand well, ink was persistent.</p><p>He hadn’t noticed that the Listener had looked up.</p><p>Their eyes met, and for a brief moment, the Listener lit up. Energy returned to his exhausted form, and he sat up again, his back now more aligned with the chair.</p><p>Mizuno wondered what could have caused that boost… But before he could attempt to solve the mystery, he decided that it didn’t matter. He went back to the planning of their meals for the next days.</p><p> </p><p>🌌🌌🌌</p><p> </p><p>There was a knock on the front door of the Mansion.</p><p>The plate that Mizuno was holding slipped from his grasp and fell to the floor.</p><p>He saw it fall like time was moving in slow-motion. The porcelain hit the floor and burst into hundreds of pieces, white dust covering one of his shoes.</p><p>“…Mizuno?”, the Listener asked, confusion audible from his voice. He couldn’t hear the knock. No outside ventures were permitted – and no temptation to go outside either.</p><p>“Could you go ahead to the library?”, Mizuno said. “I will… I’ll clean this up, so you just go ahead.”</p><p>“But—”</p><p>“Just go, alright?!”</p><p>It came out harsher than he meant it to, but it had the intended effect.</p><p>“Okay, okay”, the Listener backed off. “I’ll see you later then?”</p><p>“Yes”, Mizuno mumbled. “Later.”</p><p>The walk to the door felt like it lasted an eternity. Had the corridor always been this long? The shadows always fallen this ominously?<br/>
Had Mizuno always felt cold shower after cold shower run down his spine like this?<br/>
Freshly melted glacier ice down his back, pooling in his stomach, settling there as if it never wanted to leave again.</p><p>It wasn’t Time yet, was it? It couldn’t be. Time didn’t come like this, not with this pacing. It wasn’t warm enough yet… But why would Fate come? There was nothing to do for her here. Mizuno was fine. The Listener was doing well. Surely, she was too busy to just pay a visit? But then why would she be here? Was it Time after all then? It was the only possibility left. Except for those two there were no entities who could ever reach this door.</p><p>Was Time here to take the Listener away?</p><p>Mizuno had reached the door, the impressive size of it making him want to cower down and hide himself.</p><p>He took a moment to collect himself as best as he could.<br/>
Then he opened the door.</p><p>“Are you okay?”, Fate asked.</p><p>Mizuno closed his mouth. He had wanted to start saying something… but what?</p><p>What had he been about to say?</p><p>“It’s not the right time”? “Don’t take him (away from me)”?</p><p>What was that going to accomplish? There was no way that <em>he</em> would be able to <em>argue</em> with a cosmic power such a Time… A power equivalent to the will of the universe itself.</p><p>“You look spooked”, Fate said. “Seriously, are you okay?”</p><p>“Tachibana-san…”, Mizuno breathed in relief. His legs felt like they could give in any second. “I’m so glad it’s you and not Furuichi-san.”</p><p>“Hm?”, she smiled at him. “It’s not time yet, no?”</p><p>The word ‘yet’ echoed in Mizuno’s mind. This would end. Sometime, someday. Soon. For him anyway.</p><p>The current Listener was just a tiny fragment in an endless line of Listeners. Mizuno had been there before him and Mizuno would continue to be after him.</p><p>“I suppose so…”, he said, lack of appropriate words limiting him.</p><p>“I see you’ve been getting along well”, Fate said. “This one is a little special, isn’t he?”</p><p>Mizuno felt like a bucket of ice water had been emptied over his head.</p><p>“Did you know about this?”, he asked.</p><p>He didn’t have to elaborate on what ‘this’ meant.</p><p>This. The strange feeling of already knowing each other. The fluttering in Mizuno’s chest that he didn’t have a name for. The Listener’s smile when they ate together. Their comfort in each other. Mizuno’s fear of losing this comfortable partner… again.</p><p>He said again, but truly, never before had he felt this strongly about a Listener.</p><p>Fate showed him a thumbs up. “Yup. You like it?”</p><p>“Tachibana-san”, Mizuno sighed. “You could have warned me.”</p><p>“No, I wasn’t meant to. Though I’m here to warn you now. You know. Time flies.”</p><p>At the mention of her partner, Mizuno’s eyes widened.</p><p>He understood now.</p><p>“…Thank you for your visit, Tachibana-san. I assume that you won’t be staying out here any longer.”</p><p>“I’m busy and will be on my way, you’re right”, she said. “You can do it, Mizuno.”</p><p>“Not so sure about that”, he mumbled to himself. His hands were beginning to shake slightly. “Thanks for the push.”</p><p>“No problem.”</p><p>Mizuno turned on his heels and only heard the door fall shut behind him as he quickly ran down the corridor towards the library.</p><p>He felt bad for snapping at the Listener earlier. That hadn’t been necessary at all. In fact, if it <em>had</em> been Time outside that door, Mizuno would’ve beaten himself up over his words for all of eternity.</p><p>The door to the library was open, and Mizuno rushed down the stairs. He almost stumbled on the last step but caught himself before his clumsiness could get the better of him.</p><p>The Listener was sitting at his desk, twirling his pen in his hands idly. There were no Tellers around at the moment.</p><p>Mizuno stopped at the bottom of the stairs.</p><p>“Tsuzuru!”, he called, slightly out of breath.</p><p>Tsuzuru snapped out of his thoughts and looked up. Looked at Mizuno.</p><p>“Tsuzuru”, Mizuno repeated. “Tsuzuru, I’m sorry for snapping at you earlier. I thought—”</p><p>He swallowed. Somehow this was hard to say after all.</p><p>“I thought Time was coming to get you. I was. Afraid.”</p><p>Tsuzuru got up from his chair and crossed the distance between them.</p><p>“I don’t want this to be over”, Mizuno said. The inevitable ‘yet’ remained unsaid. “So I got cranky and said something mean. Would you forgive me?”</p><p>Tsuzuru came to a halt right in front of Mizuno. He lifted an arm, and Mizuno almost thought (hoped?) that he’d be pulled into a hug. But it was just a single hand that came to rest on his shoulder carefully.</p><p>He looked at his partner questioningly.</p><p>“You said my name”, Tsuzuru said. He looked at Mizuno with a certain shine in his eyes that Mizuno hadn’t seen before.</p><p>Oh.</p><p>
  <em>Oh.</em>
</p><p>Yes, he <em>had</em> said his name. Thrice in a row actually.</p><p>Mizuno bit his lip.</p><p>“Ah, uhm. If it bothers you, I can sto—”</p><p>“No!”, the grip on his shoulder tightened for a split second. “Uh, I mean. No, I like it. A lot. Can you say it again?”</p><p>“Say your name again?”</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>The hand on his shoulder slid down his arm and Mizuno felt fingers circle his wrist carefully.</p><p>“T-Tsuzuru.”</p><p>“Mizuno.”</p><p>Mizuno felt heat rushing into his face, down his neck, down his chest.</p><p>What was with this situation?</p><p>“Tsuzuru.”</p><p>Tsuzuru leaned forward, impossibly close, still holding Mizuno’s wrist in his hand. He rested his forehead on Mizuno’s shoulder.</p><p>“Mizuno.”</p><p>He could hear the smile in Tsuzuru’s voice, as he let go of the wrist to softly caress his knuckles.</p><p>“Tsuzuru.”</p><p>“Mizuno.”</p><p>“Tsuzuru.”</p><p>He intertwined their fingers, finally, and Mizuno allowed himself to hold onto Tsuzuru’s hand. Not pressing too hard, but definitely no intention of letting go anytime soon.</p><p>That way they stayed, until a Teller demanded Tsuzuru’s attention as the Listener. And even then, there was reluctance in the way Tsuzuru let go of him.</p><p> </p><p>Under the heat of his blush Mizuno didn’t notice the remaining drops of the glacier water in his stomach forming crystals again.</p><p> </p><p>🌌🌌🌌</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Did you know that what we did the other day is called “katazun”?<br/>
            -T</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>“Katazun”? I’ve never heard of it before.<br/>
            Mizuno</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>It’s a term for an entertainment trope… actually, this is embarrassing. Let’s not talk about it anymore.<br/>
            -T</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>Alright, if you say so. Even though I did enjoy your katazun.<br/>
            Mizuno</em>
</p><p> </p><p>The note Mizuno got back had some hastily crossed out beginnings of sentences written on it. In the end Tsuzuru had only drawn a face that Mizuno couldn’t quite read. Was it angry? Embarrassed?<br/>
Either way, Mizuno folded up the note neatly.</p><p>His third shelf of cardboard boxes would soon be full as well…</p><p> </p><p>🌌🌌🌌</p><p> </p><p>“I’m glad it turned out as well as this”, Tsuzuru said. He was eating his second serving of something that they made together earlier. Mizuno hadn’t cooked anything like it before, but Tsuzuru had been very sure about the way to make all various parts of it. “I know someone who cooks this sometimes, and it’s almost as good as his!”</p><p>“I’m sure whoever it was, he will also have known you and Told of you”, Mizuno answered for the lack of a better response.</p><p>“What? Last time I checked he was still alive.”</p><p>“Time works differently in the Mansion, did you forget?”</p><p>Tsuzuru chewed while contemplating something. Mizuno waited patiently for the thought process to end.</p><p>“So if I look, I’ll find my friends’ and family’s books in the library?”</p><p>“As long as none of them become a Listener, yes.”</p><p>More chewing and thinking.</p><p>Mizuno had a hunch about what was going through Tsuzuru’s head right now.</p><p>“You’re worried that you’ll find something there that you don’t want to hear”, he observed. “Or that you won’t show up in the accounts.”</p><p>When Tsuzuru didn’t answer immediately, Mizuno changed chairs from the one across Tsuzuru to the one right next to him. He hoped the smaller distance would have the intended effect of calming him down and not make him uncomfortable.</p><p>It seemed to be working.</p><p>The scent of the tulips they had put in a vase hit his nose. Their yellow colour complimented today’s light from the rising star’s image.</p><p>“You Listened to three Tellers today. What did they Tell you?”</p><p>The crease that formed between Tsuzuru’s eyebrows when he looked at Mizuno questioningly, as if he had just asked a very stupid question stirred something in him. He quickly supressed whatever that feeling was.</p><p>“Anything, to be honest? Their whole lives. One was a florist with a lot of cats. She Told tales of her customers’ successful and unsuccessful wooing attempts. Her cats’ litters and what she did with all the kittens. She Told me that she gave one kitten away to a little girl who then had a terrible accident and never recovered because she chased the kitten and was hit by a car. She never forgot that and blamed herself.<br/>
The other was an office worker and she Told me about a novel that she never got to write, and her husband and kids. Her best friend’s wedding where someone stumbled and faceplanted into the cake… stuff like that. You know what they Tell Mizuno, you’re the Bookbinder.”</p><p>Mizuno had gotten lost in listening to Tsuzuru talk about his work. He jerked to attention. “Yes, but my point hasn’t been completely proven yet. What about the last one?”</p><p>Tsuzuru smiled as he retold what he had Listened to earlier. “He was an ER-Nurse. He had a lot of people he saved, and also people he couldn’t save. But mostly people who lived and who had long lives ahead of them. He took in a kid who lost their parents in an accident he saved them from, and they became family. Until the flawed foster system they were part of separated them at least…”</p><p>While he was talking, Tsuzuru had grown more and more animated, his eyes shining with a passion for the lives he had recorded earlier and for remembering them.</p><p>Perhaps, Mizuno thought, this was the most important quality any Listener could have.</p><p>He had seen this quality in Tsuzuru on day one, but over the time spent in the Mansion it had become more and more polished, until it shone as greatly as the star outside of the dining hall.</p><p>It was charming. It got his heart beating. It was dangerous, in a way.</p><p>“And if those three talked about all these people from their memories, had you record them, what makes you think that you wouldn’t appear in a positive way in your friends’ and family’s books?”, Mizuno attempted to get the conversation back to where he had wanted it to go. It was mostly himself he needed to get back on track. “You likely impacted a lot more people than you realise.”</p><p>Including me, he added in thought. Though he wasn’t part of the ‘people’ that would get a book in the library.</p><p>“You think so?”</p><p>“Absolutely. I believe that every person’s record in the library is made up of thousands of other people. Strangers who passed them in the street to acquaintances who remember them helping with something to closer people like family and friends. All of these make up the image of a person to me.”</p><p>“Right… You only ever know one Listener at a time, huh”, Tsuzuru said.</p><p>“Yes. And yet, the Listeners also tell me of their friends, of their families, of their stories. Like that cooking friend you just mentioned, or your brothers. Unknowingly you’ve created images of them in me, without me knowing them.”</p><p>“That makes the library way more complex and cooler than I initially thought”, Tsuzuru mused. “Every person is a network of records then…”</p><p>Mizuno nodded.</p><p>“What about… No, never mind.”</p><p>“Hm?”</p><p>“Ah, I just had a stupid thought. It’s okay now, I’m good”, Tsuzuru said. “Mizuno you should eat some more. It’s so good.”</p><p>Mizuno decided to drop it, even though it was obvious that, whatever the question had been, it had in no way been solved yet.</p><p>“Alright, I’ll have some then.”</p><p> </p><p>🌌🌌🌌</p><p> </p><p>“What do you <em>mean </em>you’ve never slept before?”</p><p>They were having a snack in the library. An unfinished manuscript was laying in front of Tsuzuru, the drying ink glistening in the light of the swirling galaxies outside the window behind them. The Teller had needed a break, so Mizuno had brought some snacks for Tsuzuru and had been roped into joining.</p><p>The scent of cinnamon from the pastries mingled with the distinct ink-and-paper-scent of the library.</p><p>“I don’t sleep in the sense that I lay in bed and dream, as you do. I assume”, he added. He wasn’t that sure about sleep, having never experienced it himself. He could only guess based on what other Listeners told him before, and what he had read in Teller’s accounts. “It’s not part of my daily necessities.”</p><p>Tsuzuru was looking at him in bewilderment.</p><p>“Oh but I do experience something similar to sleep in meditation. I reflect on memories during that time. Isn’t that what dreaming is about?”</p><p>“Hm, I guess. But really? No sleep? No soft warm bed? No heaviness in your limbs, or yawning, or feeling like your head is too <em>full</em> and a good night of sleep cleans it away? No napping just for the sake of it?”</p><p>“You aren’t exactly a sleep connoisseur either, Tsuzuru”, Mizuno said with a smile. “I don’t have to remind you.”</p><p>“Fair”, Tsuzuru admitted. “But still, <em>never</em>?”</p><p>He seemed to think for a while.</p><p>“Sleep isn’t a necessity for you, right?”</p><p>“Correct.”</p><p>“Neither is eating.”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“But you can eat.”</p><p>“I’m eating right now”, Mizuno said. He began realising what this was leading to.</p><p>“Come to my room after dinner”, Tsuzuru said then. “Let’s try and have you sleep.”</p><p>Before Mizuno could protest, he quickly added: “Just trying! If it doesn’t work, I won’t bother you about it anymore.”</p><p> </p><p>Dinner came and went faster than Mizuno could really confront the idea of him sleeping.</p><p>He knocked on the door to Tsuzuru’s room. He hadn’t been sure if he was expected to bring anything, so he had opted for a tray with two steaming mugs of milk. He remembered that a Listener had told him of xir children needing warm milk before sleep.</p><p>The room was dimly lit, the desk lamp was the only source of light.</p><p>“Oh nice”, Tsuzuru greeted him. “Good thinking Mizuno. Milk is great for falling asleep.”</p><p>Mizuno set the tray down on the desk. He caught some pages filled with hectic handwriting that had hastily been crossed out.</p><p>“What are you writing?”</p><p>“Oh, that… It’s nothing, nothing”, Tsuzuru dismissed it a bit too quickly. It was obviously a lie. Mizuno decided to let it slip for now.</p><p>“Alright, how will we do this?”</p><p>“First of all, let’s get you out of those uncomfy clothes. I’m not letting you sleep in stiff clothes like that”, Tsuzuru stepped closer to help him out of his jacket.</p><p>“Wha—“, Mizuno wanted to protest, but almost automatically his body followed Tsuzuru’s guidance, and his jacket was taken off of his shoulders. Tsuzuru hung it over the back of his chair.</p><p>Mizuno felt… oddly naked without the extra layer. Under Tsuzuru’s probing gaze he grew more and more tense.</p><p>“I guess this is okay”, Tsuzuru said then. “Maybe loosen some buttons, and you’re probably as comfy as you’ll get. I’m guessing you don’t want to… borrow from me, do you?”</p><p>Mizuno felt his face flush hot red. “I couldn’t possibly—”</p><p>“Figured”, Tsuzuru shrugged. “I’ll get you to wear something comfortable at some point, just you wait.”</p><p>Mizuno didn’t know if that was meant to be a threat.</p><p>“What do we do next?”, he asked.</p><p>“I mean I don’t know about you, but I’m plenty sleepy already”, Tsuzuru said. Right on cue he yawned. “See?”</p><p>Mizuno laughed. “I do see.”</p><p>“It’s late already too”, Tsuzuru said. “Let’s drink the milk and talk a little. Your tongue gets looser and you can talk more freely when you’re tired.”</p><p>“There is no ‘late’ in the Mansion”, Mizuno said. “Your sleep cycle is determined only by yourself.”</p><p>“Shh, I know that already. Bear with me, I’m trying to get you in the mood.”</p><p>He handed him one of the mugs and took the other for himself. He sat down on the couch that had a blanket and pillows on it that didn’t usually belong there.</p><p>“You’re getting the bed tonight”, he said and gestured towards his bed. “I’ll tuck you in when we’ve finished our milk.”</p><p>Mizuno felt like it was inappropriate, the Bookbinder taking the Listener’s sleeping place, but he had resigned himself to play along for now. He wasn’t sure what ‘tucking in’ included, but he noticed that he was excited to find out.</p><p>He quietly sipped on his milk.</p><p>“Someone told me about the milk”, he said then, attempting to fill the silence of the room with something. Tsuzuru <em>had</em> said that they should talk. “Xe was a Listener like you, and xe was very talkative. There were many stories of human life that xe knew how to tell, and I greatly enjoyed listening.”</p><p>He swallowed. Past Listeners were always an odd topic to talk about to a Listener. For many of them the sheer number of previous Listeners was overwhelming, not to speak of future ones. Relative terms in the Mansion of course, but still, eternity was a concept hard to grasp for a finite mind.</p><p>“I’m sure you would’ve enjoyed xir company as well.”</p><p>“Maybe I can read about xem?”, Tsuzuru asked. “In xir book?”</p><p>“Listener’s aren’t recorded”, Mizuno said. “Each of them tells me many things about themselves and their lives, but it’s not the same as Telling. I can’t make books of them.”</p><p>“Right…”, Tsuzuru mumbled. “That was a thing. They still all exist though, right? In the network you talked about.”</p><p>“Of course”, Mizuno said. “Only their own account is not archived.”</p><p>Tsuzuru nodded slowly. Mizuno finished his milk with a big gulp. He hadn’t intended to turn their conversation into a depressing one.</p><p>He sat on the bed, self-conscious about how the texture of the bedsheets felt under his fingers.</p><p>The sound of Tsuzuru putting down his mug on the tray shook him from his thoughts.</p><p>“Okay Mizuno, now you just lay down and relax”, Tsuzuru said. “I’m sure you’ll feel sleepy all on your own soon.”</p><p>Mizuno did as he was told, the warmth of the milk in his belly spreading further, into his limbs and his head, clouding him with pleasant drowsiness. Tsuzuru pulled the blanket over him carefully and adjusted the pillows for him. The way he treated him in this moment felt intimate, as if Mizuno were something incredibly precious that Tsuzuru had to take great care of, to the point of it being ritualised. The thought made Mizuno feel even warmer. He was unsure what this sensation was called, though he was sure there was a word for it. Tsuzuru made him feel…</p><p>“Are you comfortable?”, Tsuzuru asked, his voice hushed. “Too warm? I can get a different blanket, or an extra one, if you’re cold? What about the pillows, are those enough? I think there’s another one in the closet.”</p><p>“Tsuzuru”, Mizuno interrupted him. He was surprised about how soft his voice felt and sounded. He was actually going to fall asleep here. Tsuzuru had been right. It had been just like with food and eating. “Breathe. I’m okay. I’m comfortable. I don’t quite know how sleep is going to work for me, but if it’s going to come to me, it will be here and now. I’m grateful for your help.”</p><p>He struggled to stay adrift and not float away into the velvety darkness that was waiting to catch him as soon as he let go.</p><p>“Are sure that you don’t want to take your own bed though…? I would be perfectly fine with the couch…”</p><p>“Let me stop you right there. I’m not having the first sleep of your life be on my tiny couch. Don’t get me wrong, I love that couch, but a bed is a million times better. Even though this is the best one I have to offer…”</p><p>“I like it”, Mizuno said. He struggled keeping his eyes open. “Thanks Tsuzuru.”</p><p>Tsuzuru lit up again, straightening up and letting confidence return to his posture. “Great. Then you should sleep now.”</p><p>“Yes. I’ll do that.”</p><p>“Good night Mizuno.”</p><p>“Good night.”</p><p>He closed his eyes. Immediately he was surrounded by said dark velvet that he had felt at the edge of his consciousness before. There was no way for him to move anymore, and yet…</p><p>He heard Tsuzuru switch off his desk lamp.</p><p>He was still conscious, for now. He felt the weight of the blanket, was oddly aware of his own body. As if it was a foreign object, both too close and too far away.</p><p>Then… a shift of the mattress.</p><p>“Mizuno”, Tsuzuru whispered. He was <em>close</em>. “Are you asleep?”</p><p>He wasn’t sure if he was. Was this already sleep, or something else? The darkness pulled at his consciousness, trying to dip it under, but he was too new to this to let it take him just yet.</p><p>“I guess you are”, Tsuzuru whispered.</p><p>Mizuno felt fingers brush away hair from his forehead. Then a pair of lips, the ghost of a breath. If he had been awake, he would’ve had some sort of reaction, but detached to his body as he was, he could only find himself bewildered at Tsuzuru’s action. Why would he…?</p><p>“I treasure you greatly, Mizuno”, Tsuzuru whispered, and Mizuno felt the mattress shift back into its initial state.</p><p>That had been it. The word he had been searching for before.</p><p>Tsuzuru made him feel treasured.</p><p>Before he could hear Tsuzuru lay down on the couch, his consciousness finally drifted away from the shore of consciousness and onto a calm ocean of dreamless sleep.</p><p> </p><p>Mizuno woke with a start.</p><p>Memories from before he drifted off last night flooded back into him, suddenly awfully present and vivid.</p><p>Had that meant what he thought it meant…?</p><p>He stole a look at the couch, where Tsuzuru was still sleeping. He could see a slow and even rising and falling of his chest. He was still asleep.</p><p>As quietly as possible Mizuno got up. He properly buttoned his shirt again and sat down at the desk. A fresh sheet of paper and some ink… Tsuzuru wouldn’t mind.</p><p>He looked over the desk. The crossed-out writing that he had already noticed earlier was still there. He didn’t want to snoop into Tsuzuru’s private things, so he pushed the papers aside.</p><p>Then he began writing.</p><p>About how the Listener and the Bookbinder were too different in standing to ever be as close as they had been last night.</p><p>About how the Listener’s duties didn’t allow for distractions.</p><p>About how he was afraid of Tsuzuru getting hurt because Mizuno wasn’t human, couldn’t give what Tsuzuru expected of him.</p><p>About how he was afraid of getting hurt himself, because Tsuzuru would leave sooner or later.</p><p>About how feelings had no place in the Mansion.</p><p>About how he appreciated Tsuzuru’s feelings, but couldn’t accept them, because he didn’t feel—</p><p>He stopped writing. About half of what he had written were lies. The rest wasn’t absolute either.</p><p>He crossed it all out, buried his face in his hands.</p><p>How was he going to approach this? He ran scenarios in his head, one more awful than the other.</p><p>No, they <em>had</em> to talk about this, there was no way around it.</p><p>He heard fabric shift behind him and perked up.</p><p>Tsuzuru had woken up and was slowly sitting up, blinking at him sleepily, his hair a mess of bedhead.</p><p>“Mornin’ Mizuno”, he mumbled. A smile spread on his face as he grew more conscious of his surroundings and looked, <em>really looked</em>, at Mizuno. “How was sleep?”</p><p>“Interesting”, Mizuno said. “Relaxing.”</p><p>“Nice”, Tsuzuru said. “It’s good to relax.”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>An awkward silence hung in the air between them.</p><p>“What are you writing?”</p><p>Mizuno flinched. He had hoped to let it be undiscovered until it was more finished, more complete.</p><p>“It’s… an answer”, he said then.</p><p>Tsuzuru immediately realised.</p><p>“I’m sorry about that”, he said. “It was too much for you, huh? And probably nothing that you’d want to bother with. You have enough to deal with after all”, Tsuzuru exhaled shakily. “It’s okay, I’ll deal with it. Don’t worry about me Mizuno.”</p><p>He turned away from Mizuno and made way for the door.</p><p>“No, wait”, Mizuno said. For a moment he was afraid that his voice had been too timid, too small for Tsuzuru to hear and that the moment would be over as soon as Tsuzuru stepped out of the room and into the hallway, as if his room had become another secluded dimension overnight. A dimension where only the two of them existed and nothing else mattered.</p><p>The memory of a touch burned on Mizuno’s forehead.</p><p>This was all that mattered.</p><p>But Tsuzuru froze, turned around slowly. There was a spark of something in his eyes, something precious and delicate, and Mizuno wanted to protect it with all his might.</p><p>“Wait”, he repeated. “<em>Stay</em>. I… haven’t finished writing, but neither have you, right?”</p><p>He vaguely gestured at the table, where unfinished letters addressed to him were laying.</p><p>“Did you…?”</p><p>“I didn’t read them”, Mizuno quickly reassured him. “I just took an educated guess at what they would be about.”</p><p>Tsuzuru took a few steps back and sat at the foot of the bed. He ran a hand over his face, let it rest covering the lower half of it. Suddenly he looked exhausted. “Yeah you’re… probably right about the guess.”</p><p>“So let me answer you. Properly. I… didn’t manage to finish writing, but. I’ll try, yes? So please try listening to me too.”</p><p>“Listening is kinda my thing Mizuno”, Tsuzuru said and smiled. It was a genuine one, and Mizuno felt relief release some of the tension in his stomach. Tsuzuru wasn’t on the defence, he was even joking, and they were back to something at least resembling the relaxed atmosphere that they had built up.</p><p>“It’s different this time”, Mizuno said. “I… where to start…?”</p><p>“How about at the beginning?”</p><p>The beginning...</p><p>Mizuno took a deep breath.</p><p>“When I first met you”, Mizuno began, but stopped himself immediately.</p><p>What was he going to say? In what order? There was so much. That was why he had wanted to write it down.</p><p>Tsuzuru was looking at him expectantly, patiently. So this was what a Teller felt like. He had been right about Tsuzuru being the best Listener he had met so far.</p><p>“When I first met you, I was at a point where I was thinking that I was tired of my work as the Bookbinder. It is the only way I know how to exist and my entire being’s purpose. Yet I believed that I had reached a point where… I believed I had reached my limit.”</p><p>Tsuzuru was still looking at him like that, waiting for him to continue.</p><p>“So when I saw you, I felt like something clicked suddenly. Something that was separated but meant to be together. It was almost like I had already known you for a long time, when in actuality I had just met you. I was conflicted.”</p><p>Tsuzuru nodded slowly. “I think I know what you mean.”</p><p>“Good! That makes it easier to explain.”</p><p>“Yeah”, Tsuzuru smiled. Mizuno smiled back carefully.</p><p>“So… I kept my distance from you. I told myself that it was an appropriate distance between a Listener and the Bookbinder. Later I found out that I did that to protect myself. I was protecting myself from getting closer to you. From becoming entangled with you. So it wouldn’t hurt when we were torn apart eventually.”</p><p>He had finally said it. Finally put it into words. <em>To name is to reveal</em>, a Listener had told him before. He had revealed a truth about himself. It had been difficult to accept for himself, but now it was out, had taken a shape, a concrete shape that Mizuno could challenge. If he wanted to.</p><p>He laughed. It was a freeing laughter, neither happy nor sad.</p><p>Still, Tsuzuru flinched as if the laugh had been the crack of a whip.</p><p>Mizuno hurried to continue.</p><p>“I wanted to protect myself from forming a relationship, any relationship, with you. To protect myself from pain”, he paused and closed his eyes for a heartbeat longer than a usual blink. To collect himself. “I failed. I admit that.”</p><p>Tsuzuru’s eyes were still fixed on him.</p><p>“We’re different, Tsuzuru. Humans are not made for eternity, but I am. No matter what we do, we’ll be apart in the end.”</p><p>“…Yeah I figured.”</p><p>“But Tsuzuru.”</p><p>The other perked up. “Yes…?”</p><p>“If despite that you still want to be with me. Then I want to be with you as well.”</p><p>“For real?!”</p><p>Mizuno nodded. Tsuzuru got up from the bed, took half a step towards Mizuno and then hesitated.</p><p>“Mizuno”, he said.</p><p>“Yes?”</p><p>“When I was… you know. Alive. I never got married or anything like that. It wasn’t bad, I didn’t feel like I was missing out on anything. But now that I found you, I never want to be without you again.”</p><p>‘Never’. Such a mortal word. Mizuno knew that, of course. But high on freeing himself of the burden of that self-induced pain and drowning in Tsuzuru’s seriousness there was no way he couldn’t respond in the same way.</p><p>“Me too”, he said. “I never want to be without you again either, Tsuzuru.”</p><p>Mizuno felt a smile lighting up his face.</p><p>He thought of Fate. “This one is a little special”, she had said.</p><p>“Let’s spend the time we still have together”, he said then. “Does that sound good?”</p><p>He held out his hand. An offering.</p><p>“Yes”, Tsuzuru took his hand, squeezed it lightly. Mizuno felt a tension leave his shoulders, the last bit of doubt dissipating. He squeezed back with far more force than he expected from himself.</p><p>Connected to Tsuzuru like that, Mizuno felt at peace. <em>Whole</em> in a way he hadn’t known was possible.</p><p>“After all”, he said and smiled. A smile answered him, pulled him closer into an embrace that was warm and comforting and Mizuno felt heat rush into his face once again. He continued mumbling into Tsuzuru’s shoulder. “Sleep might be a good thing.”</p><p> </p><p>🌌🌌🌌</p><p> </p><p>They found out that Mizuno didn't move a lot in his sleep. Actually he didn't move at all. Tsuzuru even said that it was almost unsettling how he would wake up in the exact same position the next morning.</p><p>The way they found out was because Tsuzuru himself moved around a lot.</p><p>The step from sleeping in the same room to sleeping in the same bed had come naturally to them. Even though the bed was small – Tsuzuru had been concerned about that, but Mizuno found that after the initial timidity that came with close contact with the other, he quite enjoyed the cuddling. Mizuno would fall asleep side by side with Tsuzuru and would wake up wrapped into an embrace, or an arm around his ribcage, a head on his shoulder, a mouthful of hair.</p><p>He loved it.</p><p>He loved the intimacy of waking up before Tsuzuru and staying close to him without a care in the world, close to the liminal span between waking and beginning the day. Carding his fingers through Tsuzuru's hair, not thinking about anything but <em>now</em>.</p><p>Until one day, Tsuzuru wasn't there when he woke up.</p><p>The room was unusually cold, and Mizuno shivered unconsciously. Something freezing, something icy seemed to have taken up space in the room in Tsuzuru's absence, and it was terrifying.</p><p>Where had he gone? Mizuno always woke up first. That would mean Tsuzuru hadn't gone to sleep yet.</p><p>Mizuno made his way to the dining hall. The star panorama greeted him with its usual flare, the light's warmth carefully warming his freezing limbs. "I'm cold" hadn't been part of Mizuno's vocabulary before, but now he was considering asking to borrow one of Tsuzuru’s sweaters. His fingers were ice cold and unresponsive.</p><p>Mizuno busied himself preparing breakfast.</p><p>“Mizuno.”</p><p>He startled when a weight suddenly dropped on his shoulder. He almost dropped the knife he was holding.</p><p>“Tsuzuru, good morning”, he greeted and put the knife down to pat Tsuzuru’s head that was resting on his shoulder. “I’m preparing breakfast right now. Holding sharp objects and all. You shouldn’t startle me.”</p><p>“What’s the worst thing that could happen?”, Tsuzuru mumbled into Mizuno’s shoulder. “Not like either of us can die.”</p><p>Crisp morning air had mysteriously entered the Mansion. Still, Mizuno felt a chill that was unrelated to whatever excuse of a climate tried existing within the walls of their world.</p><p>“Ah, sorry, that was insensitive of me”, Tsuzuru said. “I shouldn’t have said that.”</p><p>Mizuno turned to look at Tsuzuru, deciding not to explore that thought any longer.</p><p>Tired eyes looked back.</p><p>“You didn’t rest, did you?”</p><p>“Uhh…”</p><p>“No excuses!”, he found himself scolding. “You need proper breaks; we’ve had this before. You’re taking today off! No entering the library today. Bookbinder’s orders.”</p><p>Tsuzuru looked at him baffled until that expression softened into a smile. A tired one, but nonetheless a genuine smile. Mizuno loved seeing him smile.</p><p>“I guess I can’t refuse my Bookbinder, huh?”</p><p>The cool temperature was forgotten as Mizuno felt his face heat up.</p><p>“That’s right!”, he said quickly. “And now sit down until I finish making breakfast. Food is also part of the day off.”</p><p>Actually, none of the previous Listeners had ever taken a day off. Mizuno had no idea what a day off would include, but food was always good. Probably.</p><p>He kept thinking about what kind of relaxing activity he could offer to Tsuzuru over breakfast.</p><p>“Are you okay?”, Tsuzuru asked when he finished eating. “You’ve been thinking really hard.”</p><p>Mizuno stared at their hands laying impossibly close on the table that was still far too big for the two of them. He still felt a slight reservation about touching the other, despite their previous… intimacies.</p><p>Now, how to approach this.</p><p>“What do you want to do? On your day off?”</p><p>Oh, that was surprisingly easy.</p><p>“Hmm”, Tsuzuru thought about it. Mizuno could see it in his eyes that looked straight through him and into the vivid imagination that he knew Tsuzuru to possess. He had definitely gotten better at reading Tsuzuru, he thought, and felt a spark of pride warm him.</p><p>“Hm… something that’d relax me maybe?”, Tsuzuru said finally. “To be honest, I haven’t really had that many days off before, so I don’t know how to spend one now that I have the opportunity. Usually I’d go to my family’s place and clean everyone’s rooms…”</p><p>“Something like a bath, perhaps?”</p><p>“A bath? Mizuno, I bathe nearly every day.”</p><p>Mizuno stood up abruptly. His chair scraped against the floor.</p><p>“I’ll prepare a bath for you”, he said and rushed off. In the door he turned around and looked back at Tsuzuru. “You may take baths regularly, but this one will blow your mind.”</p><p>Because in the Mansion every earthly desire became relatively irrelevant, Mizuno didn’t know too much about human necessities, or indulgences. The food-structures-the-day thing had established itself, but was sometimes also broken up by individual Listeners, which just showed that it was essentially meaningless. But still, there had been some Listeners before who had enjoyed taking baths. And thanks to them there were a few very luxurious bathrooms suited exactly to their tastes in the Mansion.</p><p>And Mizuno knew just the place.</p><p> </p><p>The bathroom was tiled in baby blue, with a regular pattern of glass tiles that shielded the lamps that were the major source of light in the room. Filled with steam from the hot water as it was, the air was damp and vision would have been low, had the room been any bigger. The freestanding tub in the middle of the room was inviting, and inexplicably even Mizuno felt compelled to take off his clothes and soak in the warmth for a bit.</p><p>But of course he didn’t.</p><p>He kept his eyes averted as Tsuzuru undressed, left his folded clothes on a chair from the side of the room, and stepped into the tub.</p><p>Tsuzuru sighed when he had submerged himself in the water, and Mizuno allowed himself to look again. The soapy bubbles and the scented oil made for a relaxing mixture, and the gently changing lights inside the tub were calming as well.</p><p>"I could fall asleep right here and now", Tsuzuru said and laughed. "Though I probably shouldn't."</p><p>"I doubt your inherent instincts would let you sleep with your head submerged in water", Mizuno said. He sat down on a foldable wooden chair and crossed his legs. "Even though technically you don't need to breathe anymore."</p><p>Tsuzuru hummed. The sound was warm and full, and Mizuno felt the rest of the cold of the morning disappear from his body. Only the tips of his fingers remained cooler than usual, but he chose to pay it no mind.</p><p>“You know, I thought about you never sleeping a bit more”, Tsuzuru said then.</p><p>“You did?”, Mizuno opened one of the books that were to be found on the windowsill in Tsuzuru’s room. They had mostly been written by Tsuzuru himself, print versions of plays (rare first editions! Worthless in the Mansion of course, but Mizuno still felt privileged to be holding something precious like that in his hands). He had started this one and fallen in love with it at first sight, just like with all the others. Tsuzuru enjoyed the praise Mizuno gave, even if he tried to hide it. Mizuno also enjoyed giving him praise and seeing his reactions. A sheepish smile, light blush dusting his cheeks, a humble laugh. Just thinking of the last time he had called one of his plays ‘wonderful’ made Mizuno smile…</p><p>“Yeah”, Tsuzuru pulled him back to reality. “Have you ever heard anyone call sleep ‘little death’?”</p><p>“I don’t think so”, Mizuno said. “Do they call it that?”</p><p>“They do. It’s French I think”, Tsuzuru said. “I just thought it was interesting. How you specifically don’t sleep. Or didn’t sleep, I guess.”</p><p>Mizuno thought about it. He was connected with death closely and yet he couldn’t die.</p><p>“It makes sense”, he said. “That I wouldn’t be allowed to experience death. Even a little.”</p><p>But then… why was he able to experience it now. With Tsuzuru?</p><p>“Yeah”, Tsuzuru mumbled. “Man, this bath is the best. Thanks Mizuno.”</p><p>“You’re welcome”, he responded automatically.</p><p>“What’re you reading?”</p><p>“One of your plays.”</p><p>“Of course.”</p><p>“I can’t see myself wanting to read anything else”, he said. He meant every syllable. “The characters and stories draw me in. It’s almost like they were written to suit my tastes perfectly.”</p><p>“Wish you could’ve come seen us act then”, Tsuzuru said. “You would’ve loved it.”</p><p>“You want me to be your fan?”, Mizuno teased.</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>The hot steam of the air had already heated up Mizuno’s body. Otherwise he was sure that he would have flushed hot red now.</p><p>“I <em>am</em> your fan already”, he decided to say.</p><p>They fell into a comfortable silence, the lights inside the tub softly changing from red to purple to blue to cyan to green to yellow to orange to red, the sound of the water swaying when Tsuzuru moved. The words on the pages, burning themselves into Mizuno’s eyes as he read, and they filled his mind with sensations…</p><p>“I wish this moment would never end”, Tsuzuru spoke the words Mizuno had held back.</p><p>This again. His fear of eternity. <em>Never</em>. Impossible. And yet.</p><p>“Me too”, he said.</p><p>The cold returned to his hands, as if he had lured it out with his words. Odd. Had the room temperature dropped already? Tsuzuru wasn’t finished with his bath yet, it should have stayed at the using temperature.</p><p>“Hey Mizuno.”</p><p>“Yes?”</p><p>“I think I’m almost done, so will you wash my hair for me?”</p><p>“If that’s what you want me to do.”</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>He pulled up the chair behind Tsuzuru and warmed some of the shampoo in his hands. At least he hoped that that strange cold wouldn’t influence the temperature of the shampoo, and that it’d still be comfortable. Carefully he spread the shampoo, forming bubbles between fingers and hair, massaging Tsuzuru’s scalp carefully.</p><p>Tsuzuru sighed and leaned into his touch ever-so-slightly; Mizuno felt choked up, like he was witnessing something precious and rare, something that he wasn’t technically allowed to see.</p><p>For a brief moment he wished away the Mansion – he wished away his existence as the Bookbinder, wished away the garden, wished away Fate and Time. He had never longed for a human life as much as in this moment. Short as it would have been, and yet... If he had had the chance to meet Tsuzuru in life, going to see his plays, get closer to him… If only…</p><p>Intense want filled him, head to toe. It invited in the cold to spread further, guiding it along the passageways of Mizuno’s body, crystals bursting through systems. Walls torn down by the avalanche.</p><p>He let go of the hair and the thoughts stopped. The cold stopped its advance for a moment.</p><p>The calm before the blizzard, Mizuno thought.</p><p>He thoroughly rinsed Tsuzuru’s head and then got up abruptly.</p><p>“I will go prepare lunch”, he said.</p><p>“Sure, see you”, Tsuzuru said. “I’ll be there in a moment.”</p><p>“Take your time”, Mizuno said as he closed the door of the bathroom again.</p><p>Away from the humid air of the bathroom he shook his head to clear it.</p><p> </p><p>🌌🌌🌌</p><p> </p><p>Mizuno had intended to go straight into the kitchen and busy himself with cooking, but he stopped his stride. He slowly turned to look at the window. The light filtered through the prisms as before. And yet.</p><p>The scenery outside of the dining hall was wrong.</p><p>It had been a rising star ever since Tsuzuru had arrived at the Mansion.</p><p>The star was setting now - burning hot red, sending eruptions of flaming light into the space around it. It was dying. Sinking behind the horizon.</p><p>Changing.</p><p>The Listener's image had changed.</p><p>Mizuno averted his eyes and went to the kitchen.</p><p>He had a meal to prepare.</p><p> </p><p>🌌🌌🌌</p><p> </p><p>"Look", Tsuzuru said one evening. The day off had worked wonders, and he had been back at work at his usual energy and efficiency the last weeks. "We're roughly the same height, and still my hands are larger than yours."</p><p>Mizuno pulled the blanket higher over his shoulder to shield away the cool evening air of the room and let Tsuzuru take his hand. He was right. With their palms pressed together like this, half hidden under the covers between their bodies, he could see that Tsuzuru's palms had a different shape than his. With that his fingers appeared slightly shorter than Tsuzuru's.</p><p>The warmth of the other's hands burned pleasantly on Mizuno's skin.</p><p>"You have writer's callus", Mizuno scolded. He carefully touched the small blemish on the other's index finger, a proof of his hard work, probably not even from the Mansion, but a souvenir from a previous writing session, a previous place. "You need to take better care of yourself."</p><p>"That's what I have you for", Tsuzuru mumbled and pulled Mizuno's hand closer, their fingers still laced together.</p><p>"Are you cold Mizuno?", he asked then.</p><p>Mizuno had been trying so hard to not let Tsuzuru notice his condition, but still he...</p><p>"Yes", he admitted.</p><p>"Your hands are so cold. Let me warm them up for you", Tsuzuru said, and Mizuno immediately felt warmer, embarrassment heating his face, flushing him down to his neck.</p><p>Perhaps, he thought, their fingers intertwined under the covers, with Tsuzuru's breathing evening out next to him, this would fade. The cold would soon be gone like that winter of mind he had experienced at the beginning of Tsuzuru’s term, and he would replace it with cheerful warmth once again.</p><p>Everything would be alright.</p><p> </p><p>🌌🌌🌌</p><p> </p><p>There was a knock at the front door of the Mansion.</p><p>Mizuno felt the vibration of the sound echo into the gardens like strong waves washing away at boulders. He shivered as the cold spread further inside of him.</p><p>This was it. It would all be over soon.</p><p>Time was here.</p><p>He left his work behind and hurried back to the Mansion, a bouquet in hand. He had wanted to give it to Tsuzuru today, but apparently it was to become a goodbye.</p><p>He didn't bother closing the door behind him as he hurried towards the front. Making Time wait was not a good idea.</p><p>But... the front door was already open.</p><p>"Hello Mizuno", Time greeted. His stern face hadn't changed since the last time Mizuno had seen him. It never did. He nodded towards Tsuzuru. Tsuzuru who had opened the door. "Minagi."</p><p>"What", Mizuno croaked. "What is the meaning of this?"</p><p>Time sighed. "Seriously? You already know, don't you?"</p><p>Mizuno shook his head. There was a notion that had been building in his mind over the past... what? He had lost track of time, enjoying the moments with Tsuzuru to the fullest, sleeping and eating, holding his hand while binding books. But he couldn't (wouldn't?) grasp it. It was there, on the tip of his tongue, but yet...</p><p>Tsuzuru, who hadn't said anything since Mizuno arrived, spoke up. "Mizuno", he said. “Mizuno, I guess this is good—"</p><p>"No!", Mizuno cried. "I—"</p><p>Tsuzuru waited, ever so patiently. Mizuno clutched the bouquet of dandelions to his chest. His fingers closed around the green stems with painful pressure. Frosty rime formed, enclosing bright yellow petals delicately.</p><p>"Something... isn't right", he decided to say then. "Furuichi-san. Tell me what's off. Help me figure this out. Please."</p><p>"Time's over", Time said. He wasn't looking at Tsuzuru. Tsuzuru who shouldn't have been able to hear the knock. Who shouldn't have been able to open the door. Time was looking directly at him, at Mizuno.</p><p>Mizuno inhaled sharply.</p><p>"Whose time is?"</p><p>"Yours."</p><p>"Ah..."</p><p>It made sense. It had been long in the making. His frustration. His wish to stop being the Bookbinder. The cold, his body slowly filling up with ice.</p><p>"Come with me, Mizuno. It'll be less painful that way."</p><p>"I—"</p><p>"What?" Tsuzuru interrupted. "What are you talking about? Aren't you here to take me?"</p><p>"No", Time said. He wasn't smiling. He wasn't kind like Fate. Yet he wasn't cruel either. He was fair. "Mizuno's time is over. He'll fade from the Mansion in a bit. I'm here to offer him some relief."</p><p>"Offer?", Mizuno asked. "I have a choice?"</p><p>"You always have choices", Time said. "But choose now. You don't have eternity. Not anymore."</p><p>Tsuzuru stepped forward and tugged on Mizuno's sleeve.</p><p>"Mizuno, I—"</p><p>"I will not be coming with you!", Mizuno said, his hands curled into tight fists. The bouquet would be falling apart, but that was alright. "I want to stay here. At the Mansion. With—"</p><p>A look to the side. Eyes as green as the sea he had seen within the images of a past Listener. It felt like it had been only yesterday and forever ago at the same time. Perhaps it was both. He couldn't read Tsuzuru, and yet, he understood that this was where he belonged.</p><p>"I'm sorry", Mizuno said.</p><p>"Don't be. You made your choice. Now go through with it", Time said.</p><p>"Furuichi-san", Mizuno mumbled.</p><p>"Yes?"</p><p>"Will it... hurt?"</p><p>"I can't tell. But probably. In ways different from what you’re imagining right now."</p><p>Mizuno nodded slowly.</p><p>"Can you tell Tachibana-san I said goodbye?", he said then, timidly.</p><p>"Tsk. As if she doesn't already know", Time said. There was no malice in his voice. "Bye, Mizuno.”</p><p>"Goodbye, Furuichi-san."</p><p>With that the door of the Mansion closed again. Mizuno felt his legs grow weak, and he leaned against the wall to support himself.</p><p>"Mizuno", Tsuzuru's voice reached him as if through clouds. He shook his shoulder. "Come on, let's get you up."</p><p>He slung Mizuno's arm over his shoulder and kept him upright. Mizuno could have walked on his own, but he leaned into Tsuzuru's side, his warmth a heavy contrast to his own cold, and just went with the flow.</p><p>“Where to…?”</p><p>“The library”, Tsuzuru said. “It’s not far anymore.”</p><p>“Why?”, Mizuno mumbled, but continued, one step after the other. His vision was blurry with exhaustion from the revelation. Tsuzuru’s arm around his back was his only constant, and he latched onto it, focused on the warmth that contrasted his own ice.</p><p>“You’re going, right?”, Tsuzuru’s voice was strained. Had Mizuno seen his face he had the notion that he wouldn’t have liked what he could’ve read in the expression. “You’re going to leave the Mansion, and I’m not going to let you leave just like that.”</p><p>Mizuno heard the door to the library unlock and open. Halfway down the stairs his vision cleared again, and he got a look at the outside of the window.<br/>
The image was collapsing. Chipping away like old paint the galaxies and nebulas fell, made room for a darkness that was as cold and terrible as the frost of endings Mizuno felt growing inside of him.</p><p>The Death of a Listener, he thought, except this time it was <em>his</em> end that was coming for him.</p><p>Tsuzuru sat him down at his desk. Not the Listener’s chair, but the place for the Teller to dwell while they did their business.</p><p>"You're the keeper of the Listeners, aren't you? The knot of their networks that keeps them here. That's you. So Tell me everything Mizuno. Let's make you into a book. My last one even. I doubt", Tsuzuru inhaled shakily. "I doubt I'll be able to Listen again after you— after you're. You know."</p><p>It made sense, Mizuno thought. To make him into a book was the easiest way to preserve the Listeners, all those lives that lived on through him. Those people that had created this place, this library that was all around them, and currently warming him. He had noticed it the moment they stepped inside, that there was some sort of power surrounding him, one that pushed back the cold, even if just a little. Maybe they were the former Listeners' Tellers, surrounding him, protecting him. He was their book, metaphorically, something they weren't allowed to have in its typical form. But maybe... Maybe <em>he</em> was allowed to have a book.</p><p>"Alright", Mizuno said.</p><p>Tsuzuru took hold of his pen.</p><p>And Mizuno <em>told</em>.</p><p>He tried his best. He told of his beginnings, his meetings with Time and Fate, the first Listener. He told of how they had lived and how they had Listened, and what they had left behind. How Time had come to take them. And how Fate had brought the next one. He told of the heat that accompanied the Listeners' arrival and departure, and of the garden. Listener after Listener he told and told and told and he watched Tsuzuru's fingers tirelessly writing and writing and writing, and he couldn't stop himself from continuing. Even though the more he talked the colder he got, as the shadows of past Listeners that had weighed on him and kept him warm, kept him grounded, left him in relief as they were documented. In earth time the time he spent talking would have been an eternity, but here, in the library, Tsuzuru's eyes fixed on him with that look he had only seen truly directed at others, it was over in a flash.</p><p>Ah.</p><p>He was so cold. </p><p>"...And then", Mizuno said, his teeth chattering. "I met you."</p><p>"Mizuno", Tsuzuru said. "I'm sorry."</p><p>"Don't worry about it", Mizuno said immediately. "What do you mean?"</p><p>"It's. The book. It's not", Tsuzuru said. He was searching for the right words. "I wrote it all down. I've never written this much in any lifetime, but. It's not a manuscript."</p><p>"What do you <em>mean</em>?", Mizuno felt his fingers being coated by ice, slowly growing from the inside out. Anyone else it would have hurt, and yet Mizuno felt nothing.</p><p>"You can't bind it", Tsuzuru said. "You can try, but I doubt anything will happen."</p><p>"Why?"</p><p>He didn't understand. There was nothing different about the book and the process. Except that he wasn't a Teller, technically. But was that truly it?</p><p>"I don't think...", Tsuzuru looked at Mizuno and his eyes seemed to pierce right through him, as if he longed to melt away the ice within with just his stare. Maybe that was his intention. "I don't think I'm the Listener anymore."</p><p>“But—"</p><p>“Mizuno”, Tsuzuru interrupted him. “The flowers you’re holding… Are they for me?”</p><p>Mizuno looked at the ice-coated dandelions in his hand.</p><p>“They were, but I ruined them. I’ll get you new ones if you like them—”</p><p>“Thank you, Mizuno”, Tsuzuru took the flowers. Mizuno’s ice-cold hands didn’t know resistance anymore. “I love them the way they are.”</p><p>“There’s plenty in the garden, it’s not a big deal for me to go and get some new ones...”</p><p>Tsuzuru’s sad look told Mizuno that it <em>was</em> a big deal. He wasn’t in any condition to go to the garden and return without fading.</p><p>“I didn’t mean for this to become the last bouquet”, Mizuno said quietly, breathlessly. “I wanted to give you more flowers. All of them.”</p><p>“Dandelions”, Tsuzuru mumbled. In his hands the ice melted away and the colour of the petals shone in bright yellow again.</p><p>“It’s ironic”, Mizuno mumbled. “Because when we first spoke, I was reminded of them as well.”</p><p>He gave a laugh that turned out to be more of a choked sob.</p><p>“I’m so sorry”, he said. “I should have told you this in a letter. It’s not something to mention in a conversation.”</p><p>“You only just gave me the greatest letter ever”, Tsuzuru said. He pointed at the not-quite manuscript. “This is filled with such amazing stories and all your feelings. And it’s all <em>you</em>, Mizuno. I’m going to treasure it forever.”</p><p><em>Forever</em>.</p><p>Of course. Forever.</p><p>Forever was coming to an end for him.</p><p>“I should have given a proper goodbye to the garden”, Mizuno said quietly. “But if I’m honest, I’d rather fade in your company.”</p><p>“Why not both?”, Tsuzuru said and got up. “I’ll take you wherever you want to go.”</p><p>Mizuno felt an incredible happiness flood him, or what was left of him that hadn’t yet been conquered by the blizzard. It was followed by a shock of panic. “You can’t go into the garden. You’ll fade before I even have the chance to say goodbye to <em>you</em>!”</p><p>“I don’t think that will happen”, Tsuzuru helped him get up again, like he had done earlier. Mizuno was barely able to sense his warmth anymore.</p><p>“What…?”</p><p>“I can’t write anymore. I… I’m not the Listener anymore.”</p><p>“What…?!”, Mizuno didn’t know what that had to do with anything.</p><p>They had reached the door that Mizuno had left open. The cool breeze that caressed their skin burned Mizuno’s icy face like a sandstorm.</p><p>“I’m taking your place. As the bookbinder. My time as the Listener is over. Every other Listener left something behind in the Mansion, right?”</p><p>Mizuno nodded. He didn’t understand. What was Tsuzuru getting at?</p><p>“You’re what I’m leaving behind. Because I—”, Tsuzuru inhaled shakily. “Because I can’t let go of you. Even though your time is up, I— I just. Can’t. I’m sorry, Mizuno. I’m sorry for not being able to let you go properly.”</p><p>He pulled Mizuno close, and despite his own terrible cold Tsuzuru didn’t seem to mind, he just held him. A hand supporting Mizuno’s head with fingers carefully combing through his frosty hair.</p><p>Ah.</p><p>Now Mizuno understood.</p><p>There could only ever be the Listener and the Bookbinder.</p><p>But if they wanted to stay together… And they did, there was this cosmic connection, this universal wish between the two of them, not to be separated. They would have to stay apart in the closest way they could be.</p><p>The progressing cold inside of him made sense now.</p><p>“Alright”, he whispered. “Take me outside then. I’ll show you the garden. I took great care of it – so I could give it to you. The flowers… And the garden too now.”</p><p>Tsuzuru’s grip on him tightened. He didn’t want to let go. Neither did Mizuno. He found some last ounces of strength in his fingers and clung onto Tsuzuru’s shoulders.</p><p>“Tsuzuru—"</p><p>“You’re weak, you shouldn’t speak so much”, Tsuzuru pressed. He took a first step outside of the door and Mizuno expected something to happen, something to stop Tsuzuru from going outside, because <em>the Listener</em> shouldn’t be allowed outside.</p><p>Yet nothing happened, as the Bookbinder was allowed in the garden.</p><p>Mizuno blinked away the tears. He didn’t know how long he would still be able to see.</p><p>He wanted to take another look at the garden.</p><p>Almost as if he were pulled towards it by an invisible force, Tsuzuru half-carried, half-assisted Mizuno across the flower beds and towards the orchard. Did Tsuzuru remember it from Mizuno’s stories about the garden, or did he feel it too, that energy of beginnings that surrounded the orchard, the place Mizuno came from?</p><p>“It’s fine. I want to talk”, Mizuno mumbled as they crossed the first of the trees. It was in full bloom, flowers ghostly white and starkly contrasting the black bark. Still, the branches seemed to wave at Mizuno invitingly.</p><p>Tsuzuru mumbled something, but he wasn’t looking at Mizuno directly.</p><p><em>I’m sorry for not being able to let you go properly</em>.</p><p>“It’s not your fault”, Mizuno said. He felt a clear pearl of ice roll down his cheek and fall to the ground. He hoped that there would be some plants that survived the cold around him, even if he stayed and cooled parts of the garden until the end of another eternity.</p><p>“It was me. I contradicted myself in my wishes. I wished to fade until I met you. So it’s my fault too, that I’m becoming like this.”</p><p>Tsuzuru carefully sat him down, and Mizuno leaned against the familiar tree. He was already unable to move his fingers, legs, and hands anymore.</p><p>He thought that he heard the tree sigh.</p><p>Perhaps it was to fade along with him.</p><p>Perhaps it was thankful.</p><p>Though he wasn’t going to fade in the sense everything else faded. He would remain. With Tsuzuru. With the next Bookbinder.</p><p>Tsuzuru crouched down in front of him. Trying to get closer he then half-kneeled over Mizuno’s legs, without putting pressure on him.<br/>
He carefully cradled Mizuno’s face in his hands and caught one of the pearls that Mizuno’s tears turned into between his fingers.</p><p>It immediately melted under his warmth.</p><p>Mizuno blinked, perhaps for the last time, and looked into Tsuzuru’s eyes.</p><p>Tsuzuru was also biting back tears.</p><p>“I wanted to talk to you even more. Forever. And trust me, I know what forever is like.”</p><p>“I know”, now there was no holding back on the tears anymore. “I <em>know</em>.”</p><p>Mizuno smiled.</p><p>“Thank you for everything, Tsuzuru”, he said, giving meaning to every word carefully formed with his numbing tongue.</p><p>Tsuzuru nodded.</p><p>And Mizuno let the ice take over.</p><p> </p><p>🌌🌌🌌</p><p>           </p><p>The new Bookbinder sat in the garden, stunned by what had just happened.</p><p>The unmelting ice under his fingertips separated him from Mizuno, the thin sheet of crystal cold dividing them. Yet he could feel the faint traces of a familiar presence below his fingertips, something he had grown so accustomed to that he had never questioned its existence. It changed ever-so-slightly as he changed his area of touch, circling the wrist, cupping the face, a forehead pressed to a forehead, his skin yelling at the cold be damned.</p><p>This was still Mizuno. He was still there.</p><p>The tears threatened to come back, but the Bookbinder suppressed them.</p><p>What had been frozen could melt again.</p><p>He would wait. He had all the time in the world.</p><p>He was the Bookbinder.</p><p>He would direct Listeners and take care of Mansion and garden. And he would visit the former Bookbinder’s sculpturesque resting place.</p><p>Not a final resting place. Final wasn’t something that existed in the Mansion. Time worked differently here after all.</p><p>The new Bookbinder startled upright.</p><p>There was a knock on the front door of the Mansion.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>thank you for making it this far! tell me what you think in the comments!</p><p>as i said in the beginning notes, this story has been in the works for very long. i had to check, but yes, it was actually 2015 when i first got fascinated with the "lovers forced to be close, yet apart" idea. it was a lore scroll for a riddle in a video game i watched a let's play of back then. it never really left me! lol</p><p>then in 2019 i started working on a series of one shots with the theme of 'immortal beings who love mortals' and the inherent tragedy of that. back then this story was called 'glacier melts orange' (still a very good title - it was inspired by a sunset i observed through the windshield of a driving car, but it didn't fit here anymore), and it already had several elements that this one had. There was a character who brought dead souls over to 'the other side', with a servant who tended to their needs. Fate also appeared in the form of a lady (i kept that part, and Fate!Izumi became so damn cool, i love her). However there was no Mansion, no books, and no Listening, which only came to be when i added tsuzuru and mizuno to the equation. they really were the missing spice! haha</p><p>some more general notes:</p><p>-"to name is to reveal" is a quote from algernon blackwood's <a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Willows">the willows</a> which i had to read for a seminar. it's a great horror story and was and is highly acclaimed. i really love it and highly recommend reading it, if you like that kinda stuff. however the concept is also present elsewhere, like in Isabelle Stengers Reclaiming Animism: "one of the reasons why neo-pagan witches call their own craft “magic”—naming it so is, in itself, an act of magic because experiencing the discomfort it creates, we may feel the smoke in our nostrils."<br/>-the death as the last possible known category of "other" and "strangeness" thing is something my professor said - i thought i knew the source too because he mentioned something, but i read it and it didn't say anything about this specific thing. if i ever find it i'll add it here though haha<br/>-generally the thoughts about death have been sparked by me reading parts of bataille's erotism (and other works from the same seminar). i definitely need to read more bataille to claim i understand him though.<br/>-did you know queer death studies is a thing? now you do.</p><p>okay, this was a lot of nerding about stuff i read. sorry about that (not really sorry)</p><p>once again, if you read this far, thank you very much.</p><p>my <a href="https://twitter.com/eins_kai">twitter</a> again.</p><p>-Kai</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>